A Better Son/Daughter - Rilo Kiley
Some bands get massive, most bands don't get near it and never look like they're going to, some bands it really is very hard to understand why they didn't.
Rilo Kiley were a California band who released four albums, who made college rock with pop tunes and sharp production, who had an attractive former child-actress lead singer, who appeared on 'The OC', who got talked up by the music press, who never quite made it, either commercially or critically.
Said lead singer, Jenny Lewis, has released two solo albums as well as an album with her singer-songwriter boyfriend Johnathan Rice, as Jenny and Johnny. Her Rilo Kiley co-bandleader and former boyfriend, Blake Sennett, has his own band, The Elected.
Rilo Kiley have now, according to Blake Sennett, ceased to exist, with a fair amount of bitterness and recrimination. Geez, this should be the 60s, man ...
Long-time fans of this blog, all two of you, might remember in 2009 that in my 'Songs with Imagined Encounters' entry (Number 53) I wrote a jolly little poem imagining an encounter with Jenny Lewis, which was, above all, about authenticity. You see, the problem with Jenny Lewis is/was you can't quite tell if she's "4 REAL" or if she's a Hollywood fake folk/soul/indie/country singer. She was in 'Golden Girls', for goodness sake.
OK. The link I've chosen for the song contains the full lyrics for the song. If you fancy it, read them. Reading lyrics can be a hideous enterprise. I'm not asking you to read them to judge their quality, I'm asking you to read them because, and forgive me for being naive, they're not phoney. If they'd been written by Kurt Cobain, or Thom Yorke, or Ian Curtis, or Richie Edwards, they'd be proclaimed as the darkest, bleakest, most profoundly "real" lyrics you could hear.
To me, this is a brilliant song. A shock to the core. A moving masterpiece. So there are my cards on the table. And I love Rilo Kiley. I think Jenny Lewis will struggle to be as good without the band and I think their second and third albums, 'The Execution of All Things' (from which this song comes) and 'More Adventurous' are peerless.
I actually once recommended this song to someone who was so inspired by it they wrote a song themselves. It's a very unusual song, for starters, in a kind of military band 3/4 time where Jenny Lewis starts off like she's singing underwater and a description of unspecified torment, till suddenly, the sound becomes crystal clear and she explodes "AND SOMETIME WHEN YOU'RE ON YOU'RE REALLY FUCKING ON AND YOU'RE FRIENDS ALL SING ALONG AND LOVE YOU, BUT THE LOWS ARE SO EXTREME THAT THE GOOD SEEMS FUCKING CHEAP AND IT BURIES YOU FOR WEEKS WITH ITS ABSENCE".
Oooooh, swearing and everything ... and suddenly I'm reminded of Kate Nash, you know Kate Nash, the attractive British singer who had a big hit with 'Foundations' with its clever, biting lyrics about a relationship breaking down. Except I didn't find it clever or biting, I found it absolutely insufferably awful. And now Kate Nash has gone to the US, dyed her hair and made a punk record. And been mocked roundly for it by people like me. And is Jenny Lewis just an American Kate Nash, and if so, why can I not see it?
Or is Jenny Lewis the new Joni Mitchell? And before you hold my horses, did you know that the Rolling Stone magazine of the era were far more interested in the fact that she was hopping beds/homes between Graham Nash, David Crosby, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, whoever, than the fact that she was making the most earthshaking, wonderful music which arguably has outstripped all her bedfellows.
Will you take me as I am, strung out on another man? California, i'm coming home.
So after that opening bit, with the swearing and all, it becomes a soulful version of Radiohead's 'Fitter/Happier' with a litany of instructions to self to make one a better/son daughter and a real friend and, eventually, happy. Sardonic and yet it is, ye doubters, extremely moving.
If you've heard a bit of Rilo Kiley and been turned off by something, thought it a bit clever-clever, or phoney or forced, do give them another shot, starting with this, maybe trying 'Pictures of Success' from their first album and then the title track of 'More Adventurous' and if you must get something from their overproduced last album, try 'Breaking Up'. Which is only what they gone and done, the young pups. Shucks.
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
Song 8: Prince Charming
Prince Charming - Adam and the Ants
I watched Jools Holland's dreaded annual Hootenanny last night, and, you know what, it was actually fabulous. I think it's fantastic about once every five years - right combo of guests, right mood for me, absence of anyone spectacularly irritating (there was Paloma Faith, but I was just about in a good enough mood to deal with it).
The level of bearability would have been significantly affected, I suppose, by how much of Kevin Rowland and his reincarnated Dexys you can stomach - I know plenty of discerning music fans who can't even stomach the tiniest mouthful of vintage Dexys, let alone 2012/3's crazed cabaret Dexys, but, as you should well know, to me the sun shines out of Kev's backside right into my heart (it's not heartburn, it's not heartburn), so his extended presence was a rich delight.
But Kev was not the only fiercely single-minded, deeply eccentric, spectacularly-successful-in-the-early-80s-only-to-suffer-profound-and-extended-mental-health-issues showman on 'Jools' last night. No, indeed, with his new band, in classic pirate get-up, we also had the pleasure of seeing Stuart Goddard aka Adam Ant playing a bit of new, a bit of old.
He didn't actually play 'Prince Charming' - he played a new song called 'Vince Taylor' (Vince Taylor was an early British rock'n'roll look who both did the original of The Clash's 'Brand New Cadillac' and is also cited by Bowie as the inspiration for Ziggy Stardust), 'Stand and Deliver' and 'Antmusic'. Pretty sweet.
I actually saw Adam Ant at Latitude 2011 and it was great - it was a rainy afternoon, which suited him as everyone crammed into the tent he was playing and the atmosphere was absolutely rocking, by far the best of the weekend, as the middle-aged not-particularly-music-fans who can make Latitude a bit of a letdown suddenly found themselves going mental for music they knew and loved. In fact, I'd put my recent experience of Adam Ant above my recent experience of Dexys - Adam was pure crowd pleaser, and also something of a bonus belter for me. I hadn't really been a massive Ants fan (or thought I hadn't) but I, like the rest of the crowd, realised I loved the Ant-hits way more than I'd thought.
That's why I've chosen 'Prince Charming' rather than 'Stand and Deliver', though the latter is, I think, even more of a faultless pop classic. 'Prince Charming' is, I do believe, the first pop song I knew. I'm just trying to check up on this - first or second! My and my siblings all remember jumping from mattress to mattress in a holiday in Valencia in 1982, but I can't quite remember when in 1982. The other contender, you see, is a Number 3 hit of the time, 'I Won't Let You Down' by PhD, a synthpop outfit which happened to contain our next door neighbour of the time, which was terribly exciting.
But anyway - "Don't you evah, don't you evah!" "Prince Charming, Prince Charming! Ridicule is nothing to be scared of!" Utterly brilliant. But Adam Ant hasn't generally carried the same kind of critical weight as, say, Dexys, since then, and perhaps I tied him in with the New Romantics a bit. I mean, he was an New Romantic in a way, but he was a one-off, a post-punk showman of extraordinary thought and precision. Whether he invented it or not, the Ants had a unique African drumming sound which still sounds striking today. Adam Ant was also, of course, a handsome devil, a heart throb, which has also perhaps reduced his love from the music critics.
Even before they both appeared on the same TV show last night, I'd begun to think about the similarities between Kevin Rowland and Adam Ant - they were both former punks who emerged with a new sound, were obsessed with the look, fell out with bandmates, produced stunning singles and signature albums, are thought of as something they're not by the general populace, and had fairly well publicised falls from grace, Adam Ant particularly so, to the extent he became something of a tragicomic figure. One can continue to see the likes of him and Kevin Rowland as such if you wish to be mean-spirited, but I actually find their survival and regeneration inspiring and I think "Ridicule is nothing to be scared of" has never carried more weight.
I wonder if they know each other, if they had a friendly word last night. One kind of imagines not. A bit of a headfuck. [I've just looked this up. They certainly did know each other, Kev even co-wrote the Adam Ant song 'If You Keep On' and Adam Ant apparently almost joined a Kevin Rowland-led band. The Adam Ant song 'Goody Two Shoes' was even rumoured to be a bit about Kevin. Tremendous pop esoterica!]
And my final, obvious point is this. Jeez, the singles chart used to be a much more exciting place than it is now! These were the biggest songs in Britain in the early 80s, transatlantic hits too, and in both cases, the band are dressed up to the absurd, producing singular and sensational songs which people still love to hear 30 years later.
I don't mean music is not what it used to be, music's great, but what constituted a singles artist has changed a fair bit, it's true to say. Adam Ant would probably have been shoehorned into a boyband and, as for Kevin Rowland, with his face, his voice, his attitude, he wouldn't have got within a million miles of the charts.
Anyway, I've started asking a very simple question about 'Prince Charming' at quiz nights - simply "What is nothing to be scared of, according to Adam and the Ants?" and then I play the reveal when I give out the answer. It's barely a question, everyone gets it right, but it gets the biggest singalong of the night, as well as countless strangled yelps as people relive their youth and try to mimic one of the great popstars history (almost) forgot.
I watched Jools Holland's dreaded annual Hootenanny last night, and, you know what, it was actually fabulous. I think it's fantastic about once every five years - right combo of guests, right mood for me, absence of anyone spectacularly irritating (there was Paloma Faith, but I was just about in a good enough mood to deal with it).
The level of bearability would have been significantly affected, I suppose, by how much of Kevin Rowland and his reincarnated Dexys you can stomach - I know plenty of discerning music fans who can't even stomach the tiniest mouthful of vintage Dexys, let alone 2012/3's crazed cabaret Dexys, but, as you should well know, to me the sun shines out of Kev's backside right into my heart (it's not heartburn, it's not heartburn), so his extended presence was a rich delight.
But Kev was not the only fiercely single-minded, deeply eccentric, spectacularly-successful-in-the-early-80s-only-to-suffer-profound-and-extended-mental-health-issues showman on 'Jools' last night. No, indeed, with his new band, in classic pirate get-up, we also had the pleasure of seeing Stuart Goddard aka Adam Ant playing a bit of new, a bit of old.
He didn't actually play 'Prince Charming' - he played a new song called 'Vince Taylor' (Vince Taylor was an early British rock'n'roll look who both did the original of The Clash's 'Brand New Cadillac' and is also cited by Bowie as the inspiration for Ziggy Stardust), 'Stand and Deliver' and 'Antmusic'. Pretty sweet.
I actually saw Adam Ant at Latitude 2011 and it was great - it was a rainy afternoon, which suited him as everyone crammed into the tent he was playing and the atmosphere was absolutely rocking, by far the best of the weekend, as the middle-aged not-particularly-music-fans who can make Latitude a bit of a letdown suddenly found themselves going mental for music they knew and loved. In fact, I'd put my recent experience of Adam Ant above my recent experience of Dexys - Adam was pure crowd pleaser, and also something of a bonus belter for me. I hadn't really been a massive Ants fan (or thought I hadn't) but I, like the rest of the crowd, realised I loved the Ant-hits way more than I'd thought.
That's why I've chosen 'Prince Charming' rather than 'Stand and Deliver', though the latter is, I think, even more of a faultless pop classic. 'Prince Charming' is, I do believe, the first pop song I knew. I'm just trying to check up on this - first or second! My and my siblings all remember jumping from mattress to mattress in a holiday in Valencia in 1982, but I can't quite remember when in 1982. The other contender, you see, is a Number 3 hit of the time, 'I Won't Let You Down' by PhD, a synthpop outfit which happened to contain our next door neighbour of the time, which was terribly exciting.
But anyway - "Don't you evah, don't you evah!" "Prince Charming, Prince Charming! Ridicule is nothing to be scared of!" Utterly brilliant. But Adam Ant hasn't generally carried the same kind of critical weight as, say, Dexys, since then, and perhaps I tied him in with the New Romantics a bit. I mean, he was an New Romantic in a way, but he was a one-off, a post-punk showman of extraordinary thought and precision. Whether he invented it or not, the Ants had a unique African drumming sound which still sounds striking today. Adam Ant was also, of course, a handsome devil, a heart throb, which has also perhaps reduced his love from the music critics.
Even before they both appeared on the same TV show last night, I'd begun to think about the similarities between Kevin Rowland and Adam Ant - they were both former punks who emerged with a new sound, were obsessed with the look, fell out with bandmates, produced stunning singles and signature albums, are thought of as something they're not by the general populace, and had fairly well publicised falls from grace, Adam Ant particularly so, to the extent he became something of a tragicomic figure. One can continue to see the likes of him and Kevin Rowland as such if you wish to be mean-spirited, but I actually find their survival and regeneration inspiring and I think "Ridicule is nothing to be scared of" has never carried more weight.
I wonder if they know each other, if they had a friendly word last night. One kind of imagines not. A bit of a headfuck. [I've just looked this up. They certainly did know each other, Kev even co-wrote the Adam Ant song 'If You Keep On' and Adam Ant apparently almost joined a Kevin Rowland-led band. The Adam Ant song 'Goody Two Shoes' was even rumoured to be a bit about Kevin. Tremendous pop esoterica!]
And my final, obvious point is this. Jeez, the singles chart used to be a much more exciting place than it is now! These were the biggest songs in Britain in the early 80s, transatlantic hits too, and in both cases, the band are dressed up to the absurd, producing singular and sensational songs which people still love to hear 30 years later.
I don't mean music is not what it used to be, music's great, but what constituted a singles artist has changed a fair bit, it's true to say. Adam Ant would probably have been shoehorned into a boyband and, as for Kevin Rowland, with his face, his voice, his attitude, he wouldn't have got within a million miles of the charts.
Anyway, I've started asking a very simple question about 'Prince Charming' at quiz nights - simply "What is nothing to be scared of, according to Adam and the Ants?" and then I play the reveal when I give out the answer. It's barely a question, everyone gets it right, but it gets the biggest singalong of the night, as well as countless strangled yelps as people relive their youth and try to mimic one of the great popstars history (almost) forgot.
Song 7: Holes
Holes - Mercury Rev
It can sometimes be quite a while after the event before you realise what songs are particularly significant to you and your life and tastes. The opening track to the 1998 Mercury Rev album 'Deserter's Songs' is such a song for me.
It was a happy combination of circumstances which elevated 'Holes' to this exalted position, and the key, above all, lies in two words - 'Sony Discman'.
If you're a little young to remember, let me say that late 1998 was pretty spectacularly late for a supposed music fanatic to still be buying (or copying) everything on cassette. The choice of cassettes in the music stores up to that point was still just about acceptable but nowhere near the panoply of untold riches in the CD section. It was the fact that Bob Dylan's 'Albert Hall' official bootleg was only available on CD which finally persuaded me to shell out the £36 and shed the cultivated eccentricity and get myself a Discman.
[This stands pretty high but not alone in my litany of Luddism. Whether it was not having a video player till around 1992, handwriting out all my university essays, not getting an e-mail address till 1999, not getting a mobile till early 2003, I certainly was slow on the uptake. Now I spend my whole working life on a computer, but there is still a part of me that is a little scared of turning the laptop on in case it bites me.]
Anyway, all of a sudden, I had my discman and my world of possibilities, as well as a little more disposable cash than I'd had in the past. And two things happened 1. Radio 1 played the Mercury Rev single 'Goddess on a Hiway', which I liked, and then 'Deserter's Songs' was named NME's Album of the Year.
This was a pretty big thing coming from NME, which had understandably been all about Britpop and its attachments for the last 4 years or so (all the time I'd been buying it). 1997's winner had been Spiritualized's ineffable 'Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space' so it's not like I'd never been exposed to bold, experimental music before, but here was the UK's Britpop Bible giving up and saying "No, sorry, our time has passed, the best music this year has come from the USA and it sounds nothing like Menswear".
So, pretty much the first CD I bought in what was soon to become quite a frenzied spree which would last about 8 years (till, my late, but not spectacularly late, adoption of iTunes) and end up with over 1000 albums, was 'Deserter's Songs'. It's interesting to think what other albums were part of that first release, that first "Oh, my, I can have anything I want now!" Slightly odd ones really - Ian Dury's 'New Boots and Panties', Otis Redding's 'Greatest Hits', Rufus Wainwright's self-titled debut (a good call) and of course the aforementioned Dylan live album.
But it was 'Deserter's Songs' first and foremost, and I can still remember it. The effect was magical. It was the opening up of a new world which I'd thought listening to 'Pet Sounds' would be, that I'd pretended 'Pet Sounds' was, but that 'Pet Sounds' slightly disappointingly wasn't quite (though I do love it and it's beauty is actually surprisingly conventional and soothing rather than mindbending, as i'd kind of expected).
It was 'Holes', a song of such sweet sadness, maturity and enchantment I didn't know where I'd been these last 20 years. When the singer closed out this five minute odyssey with "Bands - those funny little plans, that never work quite right", I felt like, even though they were just some American band whose history I didn't know from Adam, I'd lived the last 10 years of torment of hardship with them, that their plans that hadn't quite worked right were the most amazing plans there'd ever been, which were the key to all our lives and this band was an epic on a par with 'Gone with the Wind'.
It was this, this song above all, that has made me, to this day, an Americana freak, a sucker for beardy Yanks with high voices, a fan of Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, Flaming Lips, Fleet Foxes, Neil Young even, everything. It was this song that did it.
I've made it sound like I realised this at the time, and maybe I did, but until this year I'd forgotten it. I'd be more inclined to talk about Wilco, my first copy of Uncut, Ryan Adams etc but no, it was 'Holes' that pre-dated all of that. 'Holes' on CD.
'Holes' is the best song on that album, for sure, but there are other lovely ones - 'Endlessly', 'Opus 40' and without question that single 'Goddess on a Hiway', with its glorious sugar rush chorus. No wonder it was a surprise minor hit single. And that's another thing I just remembered about it which somehow makes it so pivotal for me. I remember Andy Taylor singing along to that chorus at the Christian Union Christmas Conference. Wow, David, that's amazing, I can hear you saying. Thanks for sharing.
Well, here's the point, perhaps a little laboured. I hadn't figured these two parts of my life were joined. I associate the Christian Union with a very different me with the me who was listening to Americana. That Christmas Conference was my very last, I realise. I was invited along as a farewell. I was full on infidel by then, but my memories are warm and fuzzy. But that was it with Christ for me (not entirely, in a sense. I had a spell of churchgoing a little later, but, strange as it may sound, that was never a religious thing, it was just grounding and giving my week a sense of balance). And, this may sound cheesy, but music became my new religion. I remember speaking to some old school guys that next summer and being asked "What are you up to?" and I said "Music" and they said "Making it?" and I replied "No, just listening to it", which I know is a profoundly disappointing answer to what a 20 year old with the world at his feet is "up to" but it was true, really. That's what mattered to me, and it still matters to me enormously.
And what of Mercury Rev? Well, I fairly quickly tired of the magical pixie vocals of Jonathan Donahue - I remember being disappointed by their next album 'All is Dream', but in fact, again, there are two or three moments of magic in it - 'Nite and Fog', 'A Drop in Time' and above all the first song 'The Dark is Rising' (they were clearly a band for album openers, which is almost as transcendently beautiful as 'Holes'. It actually shares some qualities with 'The Way We Were', it's a real heartbreaking meditation on loss, memory, human failure. How does that old song go?
It can sometimes be quite a while after the event before you realise what songs are particularly significant to you and your life and tastes. The opening track to the 1998 Mercury Rev album 'Deserter's Songs' is such a song for me.
It was a happy combination of circumstances which elevated 'Holes' to this exalted position, and the key, above all, lies in two words - 'Sony Discman'.
If you're a little young to remember, let me say that late 1998 was pretty spectacularly late for a supposed music fanatic to still be buying (or copying) everything on cassette. The choice of cassettes in the music stores up to that point was still just about acceptable but nowhere near the panoply of untold riches in the CD section. It was the fact that Bob Dylan's 'Albert Hall' official bootleg was only available on CD which finally persuaded me to shell out the £36 and shed the cultivated eccentricity and get myself a Discman.
[This stands pretty high but not alone in my litany of Luddism. Whether it was not having a video player till around 1992, handwriting out all my university essays, not getting an e-mail address till 1999, not getting a mobile till early 2003, I certainly was slow on the uptake. Now I spend my whole working life on a computer, but there is still a part of me that is a little scared of turning the laptop on in case it bites me.]
Anyway, all of a sudden, I had my discman and my world of possibilities, as well as a little more disposable cash than I'd had in the past. And two things happened 1. Radio 1 played the Mercury Rev single 'Goddess on a Hiway', which I liked, and then 'Deserter's Songs' was named NME's Album of the Year.
This was a pretty big thing coming from NME, which had understandably been all about Britpop and its attachments for the last 4 years or so (all the time I'd been buying it). 1997's winner had been Spiritualized's ineffable 'Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space' so it's not like I'd never been exposed to bold, experimental music before, but here was the UK's Britpop Bible giving up and saying "No, sorry, our time has passed, the best music this year has come from the USA and it sounds nothing like Menswear".
So, pretty much the first CD I bought in what was soon to become quite a frenzied spree which would last about 8 years (till, my late, but not spectacularly late, adoption of iTunes) and end up with over 1000 albums, was 'Deserter's Songs'. It's interesting to think what other albums were part of that first release, that first "Oh, my, I can have anything I want now!" Slightly odd ones really - Ian Dury's 'New Boots and Panties', Otis Redding's 'Greatest Hits', Rufus Wainwright's self-titled debut (a good call) and of course the aforementioned Dylan live album.
But it was 'Deserter's Songs' first and foremost, and I can still remember it. The effect was magical. It was the opening up of a new world which I'd thought listening to 'Pet Sounds' would be, that I'd pretended 'Pet Sounds' was, but that 'Pet Sounds' slightly disappointingly wasn't quite (though I do love it and it's beauty is actually surprisingly conventional and soothing rather than mindbending, as i'd kind of expected).
It was 'Holes', a song of such sweet sadness, maturity and enchantment I didn't know where I'd been these last 20 years. When the singer closed out this five minute odyssey with "Bands - those funny little plans, that never work quite right", I felt like, even though they were just some American band whose history I didn't know from Adam, I'd lived the last 10 years of torment of hardship with them, that their plans that hadn't quite worked right were the most amazing plans there'd ever been, which were the key to all our lives and this band was an epic on a par with 'Gone with the Wind'.
It was this, this song above all, that has made me, to this day, an Americana freak, a sucker for beardy Yanks with high voices, a fan of Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, Flaming Lips, Fleet Foxes, Neil Young even, everything. It was this song that did it.
I've made it sound like I realised this at the time, and maybe I did, but until this year I'd forgotten it. I'd be more inclined to talk about Wilco, my first copy of Uncut, Ryan Adams etc but no, it was 'Holes' that pre-dated all of that. 'Holes' on CD.
'Holes' is the best song on that album, for sure, but there are other lovely ones - 'Endlessly', 'Opus 40' and without question that single 'Goddess on a Hiway', with its glorious sugar rush chorus. No wonder it was a surprise minor hit single. And that's another thing I just remembered about it which somehow makes it so pivotal for me. I remember Andy Taylor singing along to that chorus at the Christian Union Christmas Conference. Wow, David, that's amazing, I can hear you saying. Thanks for sharing.
Well, here's the point, perhaps a little laboured. I hadn't figured these two parts of my life were joined. I associate the Christian Union with a very different me with the me who was listening to Americana. That Christmas Conference was my very last, I realise. I was invited along as a farewell. I was full on infidel by then, but my memories are warm and fuzzy. But that was it with Christ for me (not entirely, in a sense. I had a spell of churchgoing a little later, but, strange as it may sound, that was never a religious thing, it was just grounding and giving my week a sense of balance). And, this may sound cheesy, but music became my new religion. I remember speaking to some old school guys that next summer and being asked "What are you up to?" and I said "Music" and they said "Making it?" and I replied "No, just listening to it", which I know is a profoundly disappointing answer to what a 20 year old with the world at his feet is "up to" but it was true, really. That's what mattered to me, and it still matters to me enormously.
And what of Mercury Rev? Well, I fairly quickly tired of the magical pixie vocals of Jonathan Donahue - I remember being disappointed by their next album 'All is Dream', but in fact, again, there are two or three moments of magic in it - 'Nite and Fog', 'A Drop in Time' and above all the first song 'The Dark is Rising' (they were clearly a band for album openers, which is almost as transcendently beautiful as 'Holes'. It actually shares some qualities with 'The Way We Were', it's a real heartbreaking meditation on loss, memory, human failure. How does that old song go?
Song 6: Son of a Preacher Man
Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield
The last few entries have been a bit serious and passionate and thoughtful, so here's a shorter and simpler rumination on a classic you all know and love. Oh yes, you all know it and you all love it. I know this. This is because 'Son of a Preacher Man' is the safest song on God's Earth.
And I mean that in a wonderful way. I mean I have never met a person who doesn't like it. It's the first song I play in a professional capacity every night, when I've set up my sound equipment and i have to play music before the quiz starts, I always, always, whatever the crowd, start with 'Son of a Preacher Man'. Nice and quietly, just in the background. And people smile and nod along. It's my way of saying "this won't be a horrible evening, you're in a reasonably safe hands. I, like you, know that 'Son of a Preacher Man' is a good song."
It has come to slot very safely into our everyday life. I did a neat trick at a wedding last year, where the band kicked off with 'Moondance' and I then accurately predicted that the next song would be 'Son of a Preacher Man'. They were just that kind of band and it's just that kind of song.
It's from the 1968 album 'Dusty in Memphis', which is something of a classic, but i'm not entirely sure the extent to which it still held prominence before, of course, Tarantino used it in 'Pulp Fiction'. Since then, it's been pretty omni-present. Fair play to Tarantino, his soundtracks have always been utterly tremendous, none more so than 'Pulp Fiction'. In some ways, that's as much the definitive album of the mid-90s as something like 'Parklife'.
It's not too hard to unpack what's great about this record - it's beautifully produced, beautifully sung, evocative, has a gentle, glorious groove, totally unthreatening but infectious, and of course it's catchy as hell. There's not that much more needs saying about it. Dusty Springfield was a wonderful singer and her death was terribly sad, in particular as various singers of her era have had lovingly crafted comebacks in the last decade, and she'd have been perfect for one last, great record.
If you want something Dusty Springfield-related from the last few years, I'd recommend the 2008 Shelby Lynne album 'Just a Little Lovin'', which is a straight-up tribute record, splendidly sung and played, with even more of a country-soul edge than some of the originals. There's no 'Son of a Preacher Man' on it, though. What would be the point?
The last few entries have been a bit serious and passionate and thoughtful, so here's a shorter and simpler rumination on a classic you all know and love. Oh yes, you all know it and you all love it. I know this. This is because 'Son of a Preacher Man' is the safest song on God's Earth.
And I mean that in a wonderful way. I mean I have never met a person who doesn't like it. It's the first song I play in a professional capacity every night, when I've set up my sound equipment and i have to play music before the quiz starts, I always, always, whatever the crowd, start with 'Son of a Preacher Man'. Nice and quietly, just in the background. And people smile and nod along. It's my way of saying "this won't be a horrible evening, you're in a reasonably safe hands. I, like you, know that 'Son of a Preacher Man' is a good song."
It has come to slot very safely into our everyday life. I did a neat trick at a wedding last year, where the band kicked off with 'Moondance' and I then accurately predicted that the next song would be 'Son of a Preacher Man'. They were just that kind of band and it's just that kind of song.
It's from the 1968 album 'Dusty in Memphis', which is something of a classic, but i'm not entirely sure the extent to which it still held prominence before, of course, Tarantino used it in 'Pulp Fiction'. Since then, it's been pretty omni-present. Fair play to Tarantino, his soundtracks have always been utterly tremendous, none more so than 'Pulp Fiction'. In some ways, that's as much the definitive album of the mid-90s as something like 'Parklife'.
It's not too hard to unpack what's great about this record - it's beautifully produced, beautifully sung, evocative, has a gentle, glorious groove, totally unthreatening but infectious, and of course it's catchy as hell. There's not that much more needs saying about it. Dusty Springfield was a wonderful singer and her death was terribly sad, in particular as various singers of her era have had lovingly crafted comebacks in the last decade, and she'd have been perfect for one last, great record.
If you want something Dusty Springfield-related from the last few years, I'd recommend the 2008 Shelby Lynne album 'Just a Little Lovin'', which is a straight-up tribute record, splendidly sung and played, with even more of a country-soul edge than some of the originals. There's no 'Son of a Preacher Man' on it, though. What would be the point?
Monday, 31 December 2012
Song 5: Burn it Down
Burn it Down - Dexys Midnight Runners
"Hey Jimmy!" "Yeah!" "Al!" "Yeah!" "For God's sake, burn it down!"
This is a fucking incredible song from a fucking incredible album and if you don't think so you're a f... no, hold on a second, that's not how I talk, that's not how I think, you're perfectly entitled to think whatever you like, but THIS, this right here, is the kind of music which almost, almost, gives me the boldness to say such things.
This is the first song from Dexys' first album 'Searching for the Young Soul Rebels' and I want to give you some idea of how bold and spectacular it is.
'Burn it Down' was originally released as a single called Dance Stance which is thoroughly inferior, I think, in particular because it doesn't contain the same coruscating intro as the album version.
So it begins: a radio changing stations - Deep Purple 'Smoke on the Water', Sex Pistols 'Holidays in the Sun', The Specials 'Rat Race', then the music abruptly stops and the exchange above (Hey Jimmy etc ..) takes place. A rejection, a scornful rejection of everything that has gone before. The choice of rejectees is particular striking and brilliant - ok, Deep Purple, that's to be expected, old hairy rock dinosaurs, but then, what's this, The Sex Pistols!?
They're the ones who are meant to do the the kicking out, not be kicked out themselves. As it turns out, Dexys frontman Kevon Rowland and John Lydon had a bit of personal history, and I know whose side I'd be on. Lydon always strikes me as a spectacular bore and I think the Sex Pistols were bettered by pretty much everything they inspired (I can't deny that they did indeed inspire a few great artists). I also like the fact that it's 'Holidays in the Sun' that Kevin Rowland picks on, as that song was such a shameless rip-off of The Jam's 'In the City' that it apparently prompted a fight between Weller and Lydon too.
The final song, 'Rat Race', rejected is perhaps even more wilful and spiky - The Sex Pistols were three years ago, they were the past, that's fine, but the Specials were a beloved, right-on band of the here and now, who Dexys had recently been on tour with. Talk about not trying to keep your friends.
Perhaps it was personal in this case, perhaps it wasn't. Either way, there is a serious point being made. We're on our own, the rest is worth nothing, and then as indicated by the blast of horns which begins the song for real, this is about soul.
And what a song! 'Burn it Down' took hold of me as soon as I heard it. It is an Irish song, a London Irishman's song of pride in his parents' native land. If I can paraphrase what Kevin is trying to say, it's a little along the lines of "You don't know anything, your time has passed, you think us Irish people are stupid bogtrotters, and yet you have no idea about the rich cultural heritage of the land. Get an education, you idiot!" Something a little like that ...
And the way he does it is to have the band chant the names of various Irish authors "So what do you think about ... Oscar Wilde ... Brendan Behan ... Sean O'Casey ... George Bernard Shaw ... Samuel Beckett ... Eugene O'Neill ... Edna O'Brien ... Lawrence Stern."
And those are only the ones that would scan!
And is if all that weren't enough belligerence, the song ends with a curt and delightful "Shut your fucking mouth till you know the truth!" Well, ok, then, that's me told.
And so what? After all that preamble. Well, first of all, they've got the album to back up such an explosive opening. 'Searching For the Young Soul Rebels' is a masterpiece, an unimpeachable masterpiece from start to finish, as close as it gets to a perfect record, which finishes even better than it starts, with the extraordinary companion piece 'There There My Dear' which I could write just as much about. It's soulful, joyful, mad, tight, sensational music, the likes of which had not been heard before and would not be heard again [not even by Dexys, who have determinedly gone a different path with every new album].
And what else? Well, Irishness matters. It mattered to me then and it matters to me now. And the particular kind of Irishness which I share with Kevin Rowland. The distant pride of the Irish emigrant, or the son of the Irish emigrant. There are countless millions of Irish descendants around the world, it's a proper sub-category, and, you know what, it's not fake or self-indulgent. I'm not Irish, I was born and brought up in London, but i've got an Irish name and an Irish face and I got called a potato-eater and a bogtrotter and an IRA member when I was at school - not viciously, but it happened. And I have heard an awful, awful lot of Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman jokes, thanks.
And it's annoying. I imagine it was a lot worse for Kevin Rowland than for me and, well, it fired him up. Throughout his career, from the glorious 'My National Pride' on 'Don't Stand Me Down' to a more considered and ambivalent take on it on 2012's comeback album 'One Day I'm Going To Soar' where he quietly and reflectively rejects the cliches of Irishness and ersatz patriotism to proclaim his own freedom and individuality above all.
But, let me tell you, this song, this album and Dexys' subesquent work made Irishness matter to me, it made me read Brendan Behan [in fact, I bought a 3 for 2 Irish offer at Blackwell's, where I worked, which contained 'Borstal Boy', 'A Star Called Henry' by Roddy Doyle and, hilariously, 'Full Time', the autobiography of Irish striker Tony Cascarino, who, as the book reveals as not a jot of Irish blood in him and only got to play 92 games for the Republic because of a clerical error. The book is at least Irish in that it was scintillatingly ghost-written by Paul Kimmage, who has his own fascinating story. A former tour cyclist, who left the sport in disgust at the doping practices he saw were widespread and has since then crusaded against it, to the extent of consistently, boldly calling out Lance Armstrong when Armstrong was the good guy and the hero] and WB Yeats, it made me listen to The Clancy Brothers, hell, it even made me think about reading James Joyce. Not quite, though.
And yes, it made me think about the Irish soul, this dangerous Behan cliche. My dad, educated in Cork, could recite the poems of Yeats, had learnt at school to translate into Latin verse [this is a level above me with my classics degree] and was still polishing off the Times crossword until the week he died. Somehow, this song gives me all that, this pride, this fury, this natural erudition, this understanding of the dangers and particularities of being a little bit Irish.
Kevin Rowland is a true, bizarre, inspiring, one-off - he kicked off his career like this and he has never taken the tiniest step back. He'd probably reject my reading of the song now. He'll be on Jools Holland tonight, apparently and i'm sure there'll be no 'Burn it Down', but I'll be happy if there's a 'Geno' or 'Til I Believe in My Soul', even a 'Come on Eileen'.
I'm searching for the young soul rebels, I can't find them anywhere, where have you hidden them. Maybe you should welcome the new soul vision, welcome the new soul vision, welcome the new soul vision ...
"Hey Jimmy!" "Yeah!" "Al!" "Yeah!" "For God's sake, burn it down!"
This is a fucking incredible song from a fucking incredible album and if you don't think so you're a f... no, hold on a second, that's not how I talk, that's not how I think, you're perfectly entitled to think whatever you like, but THIS, this right here, is the kind of music which almost, almost, gives me the boldness to say such things.
This is the first song from Dexys' first album 'Searching for the Young Soul Rebels' and I want to give you some idea of how bold and spectacular it is.
'Burn it Down' was originally released as a single called Dance Stance which is thoroughly inferior, I think, in particular because it doesn't contain the same coruscating intro as the album version.
So it begins: a radio changing stations - Deep Purple 'Smoke on the Water', Sex Pistols 'Holidays in the Sun', The Specials 'Rat Race', then the music abruptly stops and the exchange above (Hey Jimmy etc ..) takes place. A rejection, a scornful rejection of everything that has gone before. The choice of rejectees is particular striking and brilliant - ok, Deep Purple, that's to be expected, old hairy rock dinosaurs, but then, what's this, The Sex Pistols!?
They're the ones who are meant to do the the kicking out, not be kicked out themselves. As it turns out, Dexys frontman Kevon Rowland and John Lydon had a bit of personal history, and I know whose side I'd be on. Lydon always strikes me as a spectacular bore and I think the Sex Pistols were bettered by pretty much everything they inspired (I can't deny that they did indeed inspire a few great artists). I also like the fact that it's 'Holidays in the Sun' that Kevin Rowland picks on, as that song was such a shameless rip-off of The Jam's 'In the City' that it apparently prompted a fight between Weller and Lydon too.
The final song, 'Rat Race', rejected is perhaps even more wilful and spiky - The Sex Pistols were three years ago, they were the past, that's fine, but the Specials were a beloved, right-on band of the here and now, who Dexys had recently been on tour with. Talk about not trying to keep your friends.
Perhaps it was personal in this case, perhaps it wasn't. Either way, there is a serious point being made. We're on our own, the rest is worth nothing, and then as indicated by the blast of horns which begins the song for real, this is about soul.
And what a song! 'Burn it Down' took hold of me as soon as I heard it. It is an Irish song, a London Irishman's song of pride in his parents' native land. If I can paraphrase what Kevin is trying to say, it's a little along the lines of "You don't know anything, your time has passed, you think us Irish people are stupid bogtrotters, and yet you have no idea about the rich cultural heritage of the land. Get an education, you idiot!" Something a little like that ...
And the way he does it is to have the band chant the names of various Irish authors "So what do you think about ... Oscar Wilde ... Brendan Behan ... Sean O'Casey ... George Bernard Shaw ... Samuel Beckett ... Eugene O'Neill ... Edna O'Brien ... Lawrence Stern."
And those are only the ones that would scan!
And is if all that weren't enough belligerence, the song ends with a curt and delightful "Shut your fucking mouth till you know the truth!" Well, ok, then, that's me told.
And so what? After all that preamble. Well, first of all, they've got the album to back up such an explosive opening. 'Searching For the Young Soul Rebels' is a masterpiece, an unimpeachable masterpiece from start to finish, as close as it gets to a perfect record, which finishes even better than it starts, with the extraordinary companion piece 'There There My Dear' which I could write just as much about. It's soulful, joyful, mad, tight, sensational music, the likes of which had not been heard before and would not be heard again [not even by Dexys, who have determinedly gone a different path with every new album].
And what else? Well, Irishness matters. It mattered to me then and it matters to me now. And the particular kind of Irishness which I share with Kevin Rowland. The distant pride of the Irish emigrant, or the son of the Irish emigrant. There are countless millions of Irish descendants around the world, it's a proper sub-category, and, you know what, it's not fake or self-indulgent. I'm not Irish, I was born and brought up in London, but i've got an Irish name and an Irish face and I got called a potato-eater and a bogtrotter and an IRA member when I was at school - not viciously, but it happened. And I have heard an awful, awful lot of Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman jokes, thanks.
And it's annoying. I imagine it was a lot worse for Kevin Rowland than for me and, well, it fired him up. Throughout his career, from the glorious 'My National Pride' on 'Don't Stand Me Down' to a more considered and ambivalent take on it on 2012's comeback album 'One Day I'm Going To Soar' where he quietly and reflectively rejects the cliches of Irishness and ersatz patriotism to proclaim his own freedom and individuality above all.
But, let me tell you, this song, this album and Dexys' subesquent work made Irishness matter to me, it made me read Brendan Behan [in fact, I bought a 3 for 2 Irish offer at Blackwell's, where I worked, which contained 'Borstal Boy', 'A Star Called Henry' by Roddy Doyle and, hilariously, 'Full Time', the autobiography of Irish striker Tony Cascarino, who, as the book reveals as not a jot of Irish blood in him and only got to play 92 games for the Republic because of a clerical error. The book is at least Irish in that it was scintillatingly ghost-written by Paul Kimmage, who has his own fascinating story. A former tour cyclist, who left the sport in disgust at the doping practices he saw were widespread and has since then crusaded against it, to the extent of consistently, boldly calling out Lance Armstrong when Armstrong was the good guy and the hero] and WB Yeats, it made me listen to The Clancy Brothers, hell, it even made me think about reading James Joyce. Not quite, though.
And yes, it made me think about the Irish soul, this dangerous Behan cliche. My dad, educated in Cork, could recite the poems of Yeats, had learnt at school to translate into Latin verse [this is a level above me with my classics degree] and was still polishing off the Times crossword until the week he died. Somehow, this song gives me all that, this pride, this fury, this natural erudition, this understanding of the dangers and particularities of being a little bit Irish.
Kevin Rowland is a true, bizarre, inspiring, one-off - he kicked off his career like this and he has never taken the tiniest step back. He'd probably reject my reading of the song now. He'll be on Jools Holland tonight, apparently and i'm sure there'll be no 'Burn it Down', but I'll be happy if there's a 'Geno' or 'Til I Believe in My Soul', even a 'Come on Eileen'.
I'm searching for the young soul rebels, I can't find them anywhere, where have you hidden them. Maybe you should welcome the new soul vision, welcome the new soul vision, welcome the new soul vision ...
Song 4: My Name Is
My Name Is - Eminem
Pop quiz, kids. Who said this about whom?
"He has created a sense of what is possible. He has sent a voltage around his generation. He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but also through his verbal energy".
Well, you'd have to be a little off the pace not to surmise that the subject is Marshall Mathers himself, but perhaps you'd be a little impressed/perplexed to know that it was Nobel Laureate and Greatest Living Poet Seamus Heaney who said it. Seamus Heaney thought Eminem was good. That's worth something. I thought Eminem was good too. So did quite a few people.
It's easy to forget now how monumentally massive and potentially iconic Eminem was for a wee while. I mean, obviously, he's still a huge star, he's sold 100 million records, he's still instantly recognisable, but he has now become just another famous rapper, not the new Elvis and Bob Dylan and Anti-Christ rolled into one, which he really was touted as for a while.
It seems that is his own doing more than anything else - he retreated, became a recluse, took a big old break from everything, and came back in 2009 to significant success but a whole different level of renown. Now, those five years were, by all accounts, a pretty dark time, involving addiction, depression, tragedy and what not, but nevertheless, fair play to him for escaping the madness in the way that forebears such as Elvis, Michael Jackson etc were never able to do.
Elvis? Michael Jackson? Eminem? Really? Well, yes, again, I don't think it's an unreasonable comparison. He was that big. He is that significant.
'My Name Is' was the first I heard of Eminem, as it probably was for most people, certainly in the UK. I heard it while in my bedroom in St Andrews in second year, on a weekday winter afternoon being played by Kevin Greening, who I remember talking it up and preparing listeners for something a bit special [the late Kevin Greening was, of course, gay, which is of a little significance bearing in mind both the provenance of the song and the controversy which would dog Eminem's career].
The main thing I noticed, the first time I heard it, was the self-mockery, the humour, the pop-culture references, which were so striking and endearing I failed to notice that it was still, by most standards, pretty offensive filth! And it could, of course, have been even worse. It was originally far more offensive but when Eminem and Dr Dre approached Labi Siffre to clear the key sample from his 'I Got The' (I talked about this a little in a previous post 'Magic moments' - keep up pop fans), the black, gay Siffre responded "attacking two of the usual suspects, women and gays, is lazy writing.If you want to do battle, attack the aggressors, not the victims" so Eminem went away and rewrote the verses and Siffre cleared it.
Now, I make no excuses, in these posts, for making the stories about me as much as about the songs (I can sustain a reasonable amount of wordage with my geeky quizzy "connections" thing, but not being musical enough or really confident in my literary criticism, I daren't go too far into unpicking the bones of these songs), so I'll mention again that Labi Siffre, as well as writing 'It Must Be Love', went to the same school I did from the age of 4 to 8, St Benedict's Ealing, which i have hinted at darkly a couple of times. I had a lucky escape from there, as I hope Mr Siffre did - as reported in the national press, while I was there and before and after, it was not a place for women, gay people, boys, or anyone else, it was a place for some very bad monks who did some very bad things. Now, I don't know all that much about Labi Siffre and I don't know what St Benedict's was like when was there, but if school experience turned him, in any way, into the crusading figure he clearly is who stood up against bullies and bigotry, then rather remarkable to think it might have had an effect on one of the biggest rap songs of all time.
I suspect little Marshall Mathers stood up against a fair bit of bullying and bigotry himself in his time. I confess I was shocked and disappointed when I first saw the Eminem who was behind this little masterpiece [rather as I had been when I'd first seen the Steve Miller who was behind a song I'd briefly thought the coolest thing of all time 'The Joker', expecting some elegant black dude rather than some hairy, middle-aged white fellow]. I was as bigoted, in that moment, as anyone else. White men can't jump. White men can't rap.
Turns out he could. Now, my interest in hip-hop has always been moderate compared to some things, I own a fair bit but I'll always hold it at arm's length, but i will say that, though some might say Rakim or Chuck D, Ghostface Killah or Tupac, Jay-Z or Nas, Eminem is the best rapper I've ever heard, both in terms of content or style. It's only occasional in popular music that you hear" something which you think is utterly incredible, have a genuine sense of "How the hell did they do that?", especially one now knows the full extent of studio wizardry, but along with Jeff Buckley and Marvin Gaye singing, Mark Knopfler playing guitar (I know, embarrassing, but really, I was dazzled by his headbandy skills when i was younger), 60s Dylan, Eminem's wordsmithery on the likes of 'The Way I Am' and 'Lose Yourself' really did blow my mind.
I remember speaking to an actual 60s Bob Dylan fan and he said their reaction at the time was exactly the same - "How did he learn to do that?" "Where did he get so wise?" which I entirely understand about Bob though lose a little all these years later. Bob, for all his wisdom, could be a prize offensive prick at times and really not give a shit about it, and so, of course, could Eminem.
Not too sure how I feel about that. As far as I know, Eminem's supposed misogyny and homophobia is entirely contained within his music, within Marshall Mathers' two alter egos , Eminem and Slim Shady, just as Ricky Gervais's is contained within his alter ego, Ricky Gervais. It is a tightrope, and I rather admire the bravery of living there in a way that I never could - art and public figures do have consequences and responsibilites, but I have no idea if Eminem is a horrible person who thinks horrible things and is a bully. I suspect not. Therefore, if you're offended by it, you have the right to be, but he has the right to create what is offensive to you.
I love Quentin Tarantino and his work has never, as such, offended me, but I did feel, towards the end of 'Inglourious Basterds', a sense of wilful misanthropy and hopelessness, glorification of the horribleness of it all, which i think he could have lightened with a little more humanity. While the humanity's there, the sense of real person who's given their art some thought, I think anything is fair game.
Honestly, I really do get offended by the likes of Amanda Platell, Nigel Farage, Kelvin McKenzie, Bill O'Reilly, to the extent I have to turn off and quench my rage and disgust - that happens to me all the time, yet apart from when a certain storm blows up (like the Jan Moir Steven Gately thing) these arseholes get away with it in the way that the likes of Gervais, Tarantino and Eminem never do.
I would very happily listen to a grossly offensive song about what Slim Shady would like to do to Kelvin McKenzie. Can this be arranged?
Pop quiz, kids. Who said this about whom?
"He has created a sense of what is possible. He has sent a voltage around his generation. He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but also through his verbal energy".
Well, you'd have to be a little off the pace not to surmise that the subject is Marshall Mathers himself, but perhaps you'd be a little impressed/perplexed to know that it was Nobel Laureate and Greatest Living Poet Seamus Heaney who said it. Seamus Heaney thought Eminem was good. That's worth something. I thought Eminem was good too. So did quite a few people.
It's easy to forget now how monumentally massive and potentially iconic Eminem was for a wee while. I mean, obviously, he's still a huge star, he's sold 100 million records, he's still instantly recognisable, but he has now become just another famous rapper, not the new Elvis and Bob Dylan and Anti-Christ rolled into one, which he really was touted as for a while.
It seems that is his own doing more than anything else - he retreated, became a recluse, took a big old break from everything, and came back in 2009 to significant success but a whole different level of renown. Now, those five years were, by all accounts, a pretty dark time, involving addiction, depression, tragedy and what not, but nevertheless, fair play to him for escaping the madness in the way that forebears such as Elvis, Michael Jackson etc were never able to do.
Elvis? Michael Jackson? Eminem? Really? Well, yes, again, I don't think it's an unreasonable comparison. He was that big. He is that significant.
'My Name Is' was the first I heard of Eminem, as it probably was for most people, certainly in the UK. I heard it while in my bedroom in St Andrews in second year, on a weekday winter afternoon being played by Kevin Greening, who I remember talking it up and preparing listeners for something a bit special [the late Kevin Greening was, of course, gay, which is of a little significance bearing in mind both the provenance of the song and the controversy which would dog Eminem's career].
The main thing I noticed, the first time I heard it, was the self-mockery, the humour, the pop-culture references, which were so striking and endearing I failed to notice that it was still, by most standards, pretty offensive filth! And it could, of course, have been even worse. It was originally far more offensive but when Eminem and Dr Dre approached Labi Siffre to clear the key sample from his 'I Got The' (I talked about this a little in a previous post 'Magic moments' - keep up pop fans), the black, gay Siffre responded "attacking two of the usual suspects, women and gays, is lazy writing.If you want to do battle, attack the aggressors, not the victims" so Eminem went away and rewrote the verses and Siffre cleared it.
Now, I make no excuses, in these posts, for making the stories about me as much as about the songs (I can sustain a reasonable amount of wordage with my geeky quizzy "connections" thing, but not being musical enough or really confident in my literary criticism, I daren't go too far into unpicking the bones of these songs), so I'll mention again that Labi Siffre, as well as writing 'It Must Be Love', went to the same school I did from the age of 4 to 8, St Benedict's Ealing, which i have hinted at darkly a couple of times. I had a lucky escape from there, as I hope Mr Siffre did - as reported in the national press, while I was there and before and after, it was not a place for women, gay people, boys, or anyone else, it was a place for some very bad monks who did some very bad things. Now, I don't know all that much about Labi Siffre and I don't know what St Benedict's was like when was there, but if school experience turned him, in any way, into the crusading figure he clearly is who stood up against bullies and bigotry, then rather remarkable to think it might have had an effect on one of the biggest rap songs of all time.
I suspect little Marshall Mathers stood up against a fair bit of bullying and bigotry himself in his time. I confess I was shocked and disappointed when I first saw the Eminem who was behind this little masterpiece [rather as I had been when I'd first seen the Steve Miller who was behind a song I'd briefly thought the coolest thing of all time 'The Joker', expecting some elegant black dude rather than some hairy, middle-aged white fellow]. I was as bigoted, in that moment, as anyone else. White men can't jump. White men can't rap.
Turns out he could. Now, my interest in hip-hop has always been moderate compared to some things, I own a fair bit but I'll always hold it at arm's length, but i will say that, though some might say Rakim or Chuck D, Ghostface Killah or Tupac, Jay-Z or Nas, Eminem is the best rapper I've ever heard, both in terms of content or style. It's only occasional in popular music that you hear" something which you think is utterly incredible, have a genuine sense of "How the hell did they do that?", especially one now knows the full extent of studio wizardry, but along with Jeff Buckley and Marvin Gaye singing, Mark Knopfler playing guitar (I know, embarrassing, but really, I was dazzled by his headbandy skills when i was younger), 60s Dylan, Eminem's wordsmithery on the likes of 'The Way I Am' and 'Lose Yourself' really did blow my mind.
I remember speaking to an actual 60s Bob Dylan fan and he said their reaction at the time was exactly the same - "How did he learn to do that?" "Where did he get so wise?" which I entirely understand about Bob though lose a little all these years later. Bob, for all his wisdom, could be a prize offensive prick at times and really not give a shit about it, and so, of course, could Eminem.
Not too sure how I feel about that. As far as I know, Eminem's supposed misogyny and homophobia is entirely contained within his music, within Marshall Mathers' two alter egos , Eminem and Slim Shady, just as Ricky Gervais's is contained within his alter ego, Ricky Gervais. It is a tightrope, and I rather admire the bravery of living there in a way that I never could - art and public figures do have consequences and responsibilites, but I have no idea if Eminem is a horrible person who thinks horrible things and is a bully. I suspect not. Therefore, if you're offended by it, you have the right to be, but he has the right to create what is offensive to you.
I love Quentin Tarantino and his work has never, as such, offended me, but I did feel, towards the end of 'Inglourious Basterds', a sense of wilful misanthropy and hopelessness, glorification of the horribleness of it all, which i think he could have lightened with a little more humanity. While the humanity's there, the sense of real person who's given their art some thought, I think anything is fair game.
Honestly, I really do get offended by the likes of Amanda Platell, Nigel Farage, Kelvin McKenzie, Bill O'Reilly, to the extent I have to turn off and quench my rage and disgust - that happens to me all the time, yet apart from when a certain storm blows up (like the Jan Moir Steven Gately thing) these arseholes get away with it in the way that the likes of Gervais, Tarantino and Eminem never do.
I would very happily listen to a grossly offensive song about what Slim Shady would like to do to Kelvin McKenzie. Can this be arranged?
Song 3: The Way We Were
The Way We Were - Barbra Streisand
There comes a time in every young man's life where he has to bow before the majesty of Streisand. Whether it's 'Hello, Dolly'. her version of 'Send in the Clowns', hell, it could even be 'Meet the Fockers', but even the most churlish need to accept at some point that this behemoth of American culture is actually rather good.
My full revelation Streisand moment came from watching 'The Way We Were' - it's a pretty imperfect film which could do with being shorter or longer, but it's given considerable power by three things 1. Streisand's excellent performance 2. the extensive use of this title track 3. the very subject matter being the passing of time, nostalgia, disappointment, unrealised dreams, endurance etc. At the end, it feels like a bigger, more important film than it is.
The song is, I think, an extremely pretty song, written by Marvin Hamlisch, who died this year [incidentally, there's a joke in the film 'Role Models' about one of the main characters looking like Marvin Hamlisch - an extremely obscure joke. 'Role Models' is a way way better film than you think it's going to be. Trust me] with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman. It's become a standard, I was aware of its existence throughout my life, I think, without really knowing much about it. It's the kind of think that soundtracks BBC golf montages and retrospectives of dead sitcom stars.
It is referenced in a couple of unlikely places - very briefly, implicitly, on the Paul Weller song 'Shadow of the Sun' where he sings "or has time rewritten everything like we never dreamt that it could?" and, more thoroughly on the Wu-Tang Clan "Can It Be All So Simple" from their classic debut album, though the sample is actually from the Gladys Knight version of the song.
The lyrics are, I think, beautiful, and extremely (excuse me ...) memorable. There are various phrases that leap out at you, "the way we were", "has time rewritten everything", "can it be that it was all so simple then", "what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget" and, most simply, and famously "Memories ...".
Here is where my confusion starts and where, if I could, I would turn this blog entry into an impressionistic waltz through the multi-layered associative traps laid by nostalgia. For it can't be just me who, in their life, heavily associated (if not confused) this song with another monster power ballad, also sung by Streisand, by the name, of course, of 'Memory' - the Andrew Lloyd Webber one with lyrics by Trevor Nunn. [not surprising it's confusing - the two songs bookend a 1981 album by Streisand called 'Memories'].
Now, this was a song I knew well from a very young age - it was the signature track from 'Cats', which I was taken to twice by my father (the second time kicking and screaming, I think, only to be persuaded by tone-deaf Paddy's hilarious rendition of 'Macavity' and then to have a whale of a time). I think it's the only song from the show where the lyrics aren't from TS Eliot and, I must admit, it was my least favourite song in the show, even though I knew it was the one I was supposed to like the best. It made me feel sad, and creeped out, and was no 'Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat'.
And as years passed and I heard about a song called 'Memory' and it went next to Barbra Streisand, you can forgive my confusion. I have always stuck to my original feelings about the Lloyd Webber song - I didn't really like it, it was a far inferior companion piece to the stunning Marvin Hamlisch song, it demanded and screamed for attention, it warbled, it was melodrama, rather than dreamy reverie which lures you in.
Nevertheless, when I saw someone singing 'Memory' in the truly ridiculous Lloyd Webber reality show 'Superstar', it certainly did set off in me a version of the feelings that both songs attempt to get to grips with - a pain and sadness for my childhood, for my father and his good intentions, for all kinds of innocence.
I am reminded again of the blog post I wrote a couple of years ago about Possibilities and how 'The Sound of Music' set off in me an impossibly and indescribably dense melancholy and feeling of constriction and here was another musical, intrinsic to my childhood, having the same effect.
Also, I felt a little more well inclined to the song, began to see it in a new light, that it was meant to be mawkish and grotesque and self-pitying, it was about Faded Glamour (something I also wrote a little about previously) rather than the gentles sadness of recollection.
Still, 'The Way We Were' is still just a far better song, isn't it? It's just lush. And, thankfully, I can enjoy it on its own terms and, rather than delve deep into my own personal memory bank. associate it with a 40ish year old Robert Redford pretending to be a college student and Barbra Streisand talking far too fast and a general sense of a film trying to be too big and serious for its own good. Which is fine with me.
There comes a time in every young man's life where he has to bow before the majesty of Streisand. Whether it's 'Hello, Dolly'. her version of 'Send in the Clowns', hell, it could even be 'Meet the Fockers', but even the most churlish need to accept at some point that this behemoth of American culture is actually rather good.
My full revelation Streisand moment came from watching 'The Way We Were' - it's a pretty imperfect film which could do with being shorter or longer, but it's given considerable power by three things 1. Streisand's excellent performance 2. the extensive use of this title track 3. the very subject matter being the passing of time, nostalgia, disappointment, unrealised dreams, endurance etc. At the end, it feels like a bigger, more important film than it is.
The song is, I think, an extremely pretty song, written by Marvin Hamlisch, who died this year [incidentally, there's a joke in the film 'Role Models' about one of the main characters looking like Marvin Hamlisch - an extremely obscure joke. 'Role Models' is a way way better film than you think it's going to be. Trust me] with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman. It's become a standard, I was aware of its existence throughout my life, I think, without really knowing much about it. It's the kind of think that soundtracks BBC golf montages and retrospectives of dead sitcom stars.
It is referenced in a couple of unlikely places - very briefly, implicitly, on the Paul Weller song 'Shadow of the Sun' where he sings "or has time rewritten everything like we never dreamt that it could?" and, more thoroughly on the Wu-Tang Clan "Can It Be All So Simple" from their classic debut album, though the sample is actually from the Gladys Knight version of the song.
The lyrics are, I think, beautiful, and extremely (excuse me ...) memorable. There are various phrases that leap out at you, "the way we were", "has time rewritten everything", "can it be that it was all so simple then", "what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget" and, most simply, and famously "Memories ...".
Here is where my confusion starts and where, if I could, I would turn this blog entry into an impressionistic waltz through the multi-layered associative traps laid by nostalgia. For it can't be just me who, in their life, heavily associated (if not confused) this song with another monster power ballad, also sung by Streisand, by the name, of course, of 'Memory' - the Andrew Lloyd Webber one with lyrics by Trevor Nunn. [not surprising it's confusing - the two songs bookend a 1981 album by Streisand called 'Memories'].
Now, this was a song I knew well from a very young age - it was the signature track from 'Cats', which I was taken to twice by my father (the second time kicking and screaming, I think, only to be persuaded by tone-deaf Paddy's hilarious rendition of 'Macavity' and then to have a whale of a time). I think it's the only song from the show where the lyrics aren't from TS Eliot and, I must admit, it was my least favourite song in the show, even though I knew it was the one I was supposed to like the best. It made me feel sad, and creeped out, and was no 'Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat'.
And as years passed and I heard about a song called 'Memory' and it went next to Barbra Streisand, you can forgive my confusion. I have always stuck to my original feelings about the Lloyd Webber song - I didn't really like it, it was a far inferior companion piece to the stunning Marvin Hamlisch song, it demanded and screamed for attention, it warbled, it was melodrama, rather than dreamy reverie which lures you in.
Nevertheless, when I saw someone singing 'Memory' in the truly ridiculous Lloyd Webber reality show 'Superstar', it certainly did set off in me a version of the feelings that both songs attempt to get to grips with - a pain and sadness for my childhood, for my father and his good intentions, for all kinds of innocence.
I am reminded again of the blog post I wrote a couple of years ago about Possibilities and how 'The Sound of Music' set off in me an impossibly and indescribably dense melancholy and feeling of constriction and here was another musical, intrinsic to my childhood, having the same effect.
Also, I felt a little more well inclined to the song, began to see it in a new light, that it was meant to be mawkish and grotesque and self-pitying, it was about Faded Glamour (something I also wrote a little about previously) rather than the gentles sadness of recollection.
Still, 'The Way We Were' is still just a far better song, isn't it? It's just lush. And, thankfully, I can enjoy it on its own terms and, rather than delve deep into my own personal memory bank. associate it with a 40ish year old Robert Redford pretending to be a college student and Barbra Streisand talking far too fast and a general sense of a film trying to be too big and serious for its own good. Which is fine with me.
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Song 2: Wonderwall
Wonderwall - Oasis
Really? Oasis? Wonderwall? And i've even posted a link to it in case you can't remember what it sounds like ... how helpful of me.
But don't run a mile. If I can recapture a little of the impact this song had when it came out and what it has turned into, then it'll be worth writing, if not reading.
This is a big song. A tipping point. A game changer. An epic win. A shot heard around the world. After all.
I was 4 Blur. Of course I was. My big musical awakening came in 1994/5 and it was The Jam first but very closely followed by 'End of a Century' and hearing Blur liked the Jam and Madness and seeing Damon on The O-Zone talking about books and thinking it was unfair that people were pillorying him for being posh - hell, I was posh and he didn't sound anything like me.
So, I was for Blur, hence anti-Oasis, and Blur won the Battle of Britpop of course, in the summer of 1995, and Oasis has been shown up, cos they'd released Some Might Say (deeply average) then Roll With It (appalling) and they were a busted flush. [Why Oasis did release Roll With It is one of the great mysteries of the 90s - surely they weren't that tactically aware that they knew they were keeping their powder dry and that victory would inevitably be there in the long haul].
Autumn 1995 then: specifically the half term of the first term of my last year at school. Two week half term. Two weeks, ridiculous. And a seminal two weeks for your young writer. First week - the Greek trip. A group of young classicists descend on the ancient and historic land, given licence by our two teachers to drink beer (how bold) and generally be "adults". It was a memorable trip, though rather spiky and bad-tempered - it proved to be, I'd say in retrospect, the death knell for my long held friendship with a boy called Mark Hudson, sadly (entirely due to my general prickishness) but also solidified two very important friendships of mine, with Wieland Hoban and Alex Frith. It was also, dammit, the first time I smoked a cigarette, on a beach, with Wieland and Max Baird-Smith (another close friendship of the time which sadly has not been maintained). And what did we talk about ... above all? Sophocles vs Aeschylus? Plato vs Aristotle? Greeks vs Trojans? Delphi vs Mycenae? Souvlaki vs Tsatsiki? Blur vs Oasis of course.
Even the teachers got involved. 'The Great Escape' had come out to great acclaim a month before, but 'What's the Story' was only a week or two old, and there were Blur camps and Oasis camps arguing their point (education, background, aspiration, geography, hair, everything came into play), but i think the Oasis album began to gain more prominence and dominance of the coach's airwaves as the week progressed. And I fought it, really I did, but gradually it began to nag at me. This ain't bad. Nor this one. Really not bad. Better than 'Roll With It' anyway.
Then we came home, frazzled and a little bit grown up. But the second week of that half-term for me was even more important. It was university-picking time and I can't remember the exact order things went in, whether I'd already dismissed the idea of Oxbridge (out of laziness and fear of unjust rejection - which i felt had dogged my school career, ha! - more than anything), I think so, and I was basically down to two options, Edinburgh (a place I already knew well) and St Andrews (where I'd never been before).
I travelled up to St Andrews with my friend Stephen Bovey to have a look at the faculties and get a feel for the town [At that stage Stephen, not expecting to get into Cambridge, thought he'd go to St Andrews too]. As luck would have it, a fine coterie of older friends were already there, and we had a rare old time in that bizarre, magical, windy old town, which convinced me that this was the place for me to spend four years of my life.
Besides McEwans 80/ and a curry waiter in a cassock, my main memory of those few days in St Andrews was that 'Wonderwall' was everywhere - on the radio, in the pubs, hell, people were even singing it to each other in the streets. And it was special. It seemed to mean something.
And I remember my excitement whenever I heard its opening bars on the radio (which, you could pretty much guarantee, would be every hour) and then it was released as a single. At which point one realised that the so-called Battle of Britpop had been a phony war. Here now were both teams bringing out their big guns.
Blur's next gambit was 'The Universal' - a glorious song with a glorious video, a graceful tour de force. And it flopped. Well, Number 5 then out of the Top 10. Whereas Wonderwall went Number 2 - for weeks and weeks, denied the top spot by Simply Red and then Coolio, but it didn't really matter. 'What's the Story' massively outsold 'The Great Escape', massively outsold everything. And it was 'Wonderwall' that did it.
I thoroughly gave in come Christmas time, asking to be given 'What's the Story' and 'Pet Sounds' for Christmas, which I spent in a snowy Edinburgh. And it was Oasis rather than the Beach Boys I demanded my family endure on the car stereo, and my mother, insightful as ever, though not knowing her Pulp from her Elbow, instantly said "Well, it does just sound like an exact copy of the Beatles, doesn't it?"
And do you remember The Mike Flowers Pop cover of Wonderwall, which also went to Number 2 that Christmas? It somehow confirmed the majesty of the song, that some people really did think the Oasis version was a cover of an old classic. It took less than a few weeks for a song to become a standard. And then (much later) there's the Ryan Adams cover, which Noel Gallagher himself loves. I love Ryan Adams, I love Wonderwall, put the two together and I'm a little bit ... meh, not quite, to be honest.
'Wonderwall' was the song that united everybody, from the indie kid to the rugby boy to the Spanish hippy to the middle-aged couple who hate modern music grudgingly getting up onto the floor at the student disco to hobble along out of time. I know that cos I saw it. And so did you.
The alpha males loved it - as i finally began to emerge from social purgatory and got invites to 18th birthday parties of the nicer "jocks" of my school year, and sat in agony as they danced to Take That and East 17 and R Kelly's 'She Got That Vibe' - is there a worse song in the world? * - and said to myself if they only played Wonderwall, then I'd dance, and then they did play Wonderwall, and of course I didn't dance, but the lads did, and they put their arms around each other and sang along, and I asked myself "What, what, can be mine, just mine, in this world?".
* and yet, postscript, there was I, 15 years later, at the indier than indie All Tomorrow's Parties, throwing all my best shapes on a packed dancefloor to Kelly's 'Ignition (Remix)' only for the DJ to then spoil it by following that with 'Bump'n'Grind' - there are limits to the r'n'b us indie folk can love "ironically"]
Everyone heard something different in it - their wedding song, their last chance, their imaginary friend, their boozy chorus, a song like songs used to be, a beautiful chord progression, a threat. Even years later, Matt Ross, one of the nicer of those alpha males, used it nvery adroitly in a facebook status when facebook statuses still had to follow "is". ... He wrote ... "is, after all, your wonderwall." [my first year on facebook statuses was all about trying to incorporate song lyrics as neatly as that]. Rory Kinnear said people loved it cos of the way Liam sang the words "WIEENDING" and "BLIEENDING". For me, though, it was all about the way he sang the first word "Today" and then the way he sang "Maybe".
This was, of course, the second time Oasis had put "Maybe" at the centre of a heart-tugging song. Somehow or other I'd missed 'Live Forever' the previous year and didn't realise that Oasis were already capable of such straightforward beauty as 'Wonderwall' contained. Sadly, after those two, they became a band which were no longer "maybe" and very much "definitely" and that's rather been their downfall.
But, right at that moment, Noel and Liam Gallagher put all their eggs in one basket, released all the quality they has stored up inside them in their bid for world domination - the B-sides were, of course, outstanding too [Round Are Way, The Masterplan, such a hot streak, just think if they'd stored some of these songs up], and the "battle" of the next singles after those two, well that was a write-off. Oasis further upped the epic quotient with 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and Blur released the horrible 'Stereotypes', the very worst example of their art, and it was Oasis now that seemed to have the strength in depth. True, to an extent. 'What's the Story' still had 'Cast No Shadow', it had the title track, 'She's Electric' and 'Champagne Supernova', 'The Great Escape' was overlong and had a few stinkers (though there are three more Blur crackers on it, I'd say, namely 'He Thought of Cars', 'Yuko and Hiro', and my very favourite, 'Best Days').
And what since? Well, Oasis were never that good again, there's no denying. A few decent singles, but the chemistry between the two brothers became corrosive and obstructive and I think they're better off apart for now. And Blur - well, they've all gone on to a variety of delights and also put a few more excellent albums and ultimately, perhaps, the triumph is Damon Albarn's - the full range of what he's achieved since then beggars belief, and he can look at it all and say, you know what, Wonderwall may have kicked The Universal out of the park back in 1995, but on a glorious August evening in 2012, they were both being sung back by 60,000 people in separate locations in London town. And Blur were the chosen band of the people, playing the Olympics closing concert across the city in Hyde Park. And there was Liam Gallagher in the Olympic Stadium, not a fearsome firebrand but just another 40-plus establishment celebrity, without his brother, the song's creator (who'd turned the gig down), starting out rather nervous and a little bit flat, before turning it around and getting the singalong the song deserved.
Because, after all, what is a Wonderwall, except a 1968 film soundtracked by George Harrison?
Well, it's a beautiful song in a minor key which actually has excellent lyrics and lovely strings, and it's one of the few songs which has had that effect on me in my life, and yes, it's a little embarrassing to say that now, because it's such a cliche, and it's Oasis, and they were lumpy and got dull quickly, but hey, it still stops me in my tracks if it catches me in the right mood now.
Really? Oasis? Wonderwall? And i've even posted a link to it in case you can't remember what it sounds like ... how helpful of me.
But don't run a mile. If I can recapture a little of the impact this song had when it came out and what it has turned into, then it'll be worth writing, if not reading.
This is a big song. A tipping point. A game changer. An epic win. A shot heard around the world. After all.
I was 4 Blur. Of course I was. My big musical awakening came in 1994/5 and it was The Jam first but very closely followed by 'End of a Century' and hearing Blur liked the Jam and Madness and seeing Damon on The O-Zone talking about books and thinking it was unfair that people were pillorying him for being posh - hell, I was posh and he didn't sound anything like me.
So, I was for Blur, hence anti-Oasis, and Blur won the Battle of Britpop of course, in the summer of 1995, and Oasis has been shown up, cos they'd released Some Might Say (deeply average) then Roll With It (appalling) and they were a busted flush. [Why Oasis did release Roll With It is one of the great mysteries of the 90s - surely they weren't that tactically aware that they knew they were keeping their powder dry and that victory would inevitably be there in the long haul].
Autumn 1995 then: specifically the half term of the first term of my last year at school. Two week half term. Two weeks, ridiculous. And a seminal two weeks for your young writer. First week - the Greek trip. A group of young classicists descend on the ancient and historic land, given licence by our two teachers to drink beer (how bold) and generally be "adults". It was a memorable trip, though rather spiky and bad-tempered - it proved to be, I'd say in retrospect, the death knell for my long held friendship with a boy called Mark Hudson, sadly (entirely due to my general prickishness) but also solidified two very important friendships of mine, with Wieland Hoban and Alex Frith. It was also, dammit, the first time I smoked a cigarette, on a beach, with Wieland and Max Baird-Smith (another close friendship of the time which sadly has not been maintained). And what did we talk about ... above all? Sophocles vs Aeschylus? Plato vs Aristotle? Greeks vs Trojans? Delphi vs Mycenae? Souvlaki vs Tsatsiki? Blur vs Oasis of course.
Even the teachers got involved. 'The Great Escape' had come out to great acclaim a month before, but 'What's the Story' was only a week or two old, and there were Blur camps and Oasis camps arguing their point (education, background, aspiration, geography, hair, everything came into play), but i think the Oasis album began to gain more prominence and dominance of the coach's airwaves as the week progressed. And I fought it, really I did, but gradually it began to nag at me. This ain't bad. Nor this one. Really not bad. Better than 'Roll With It' anyway.
Then we came home, frazzled and a little bit grown up. But the second week of that half-term for me was even more important. It was university-picking time and I can't remember the exact order things went in, whether I'd already dismissed the idea of Oxbridge (out of laziness and fear of unjust rejection - which i felt had dogged my school career, ha! - more than anything), I think so, and I was basically down to two options, Edinburgh (a place I already knew well) and St Andrews (where I'd never been before).
I travelled up to St Andrews with my friend Stephen Bovey to have a look at the faculties and get a feel for the town [At that stage Stephen, not expecting to get into Cambridge, thought he'd go to St Andrews too]. As luck would have it, a fine coterie of older friends were already there, and we had a rare old time in that bizarre, magical, windy old town, which convinced me that this was the place for me to spend four years of my life.
Besides McEwans 80/ and a curry waiter in a cassock, my main memory of those few days in St Andrews was that 'Wonderwall' was everywhere - on the radio, in the pubs, hell, people were even singing it to each other in the streets. And it was special. It seemed to mean something.
And I remember my excitement whenever I heard its opening bars on the radio (which, you could pretty much guarantee, would be every hour) and then it was released as a single. At which point one realised that the so-called Battle of Britpop had been a phony war. Here now were both teams bringing out their big guns.
Blur's next gambit was 'The Universal' - a glorious song with a glorious video, a graceful tour de force. And it flopped. Well, Number 5 then out of the Top 10. Whereas Wonderwall went Number 2 - for weeks and weeks, denied the top spot by Simply Red and then Coolio, but it didn't really matter. 'What's the Story' massively outsold 'The Great Escape', massively outsold everything. And it was 'Wonderwall' that did it.
I thoroughly gave in come Christmas time, asking to be given 'What's the Story' and 'Pet Sounds' for Christmas, which I spent in a snowy Edinburgh. And it was Oasis rather than the Beach Boys I demanded my family endure on the car stereo, and my mother, insightful as ever, though not knowing her Pulp from her Elbow, instantly said "Well, it does just sound like an exact copy of the Beatles, doesn't it?"
And do you remember The Mike Flowers Pop cover of Wonderwall, which also went to Number 2 that Christmas? It somehow confirmed the majesty of the song, that some people really did think the Oasis version was a cover of an old classic. It took less than a few weeks for a song to become a standard. And then (much later) there's the Ryan Adams cover, which Noel Gallagher himself loves. I love Ryan Adams, I love Wonderwall, put the two together and I'm a little bit ... meh, not quite, to be honest.
'Wonderwall' was the song that united everybody, from the indie kid to the rugby boy to the Spanish hippy to the middle-aged couple who hate modern music grudgingly getting up onto the floor at the student disco to hobble along out of time. I know that cos I saw it. And so did you.
The alpha males loved it - as i finally began to emerge from social purgatory and got invites to 18th birthday parties of the nicer "jocks" of my school year, and sat in agony as they danced to Take That and East 17 and R Kelly's 'She Got That Vibe' - is there a worse song in the world? * - and said to myself if they only played Wonderwall, then I'd dance, and then they did play Wonderwall, and of course I didn't dance, but the lads did, and they put their arms around each other and sang along, and I asked myself "What, what, can be mine, just mine, in this world?".
* and yet, postscript, there was I, 15 years later, at the indier than indie All Tomorrow's Parties, throwing all my best shapes on a packed dancefloor to Kelly's 'Ignition (Remix)' only for the DJ to then spoil it by following that with 'Bump'n'Grind' - there are limits to the r'n'b us indie folk can love "ironically"]
Everyone heard something different in it - their wedding song, their last chance, their imaginary friend, their boozy chorus, a song like songs used to be, a beautiful chord progression, a threat. Even years later, Matt Ross, one of the nicer of those alpha males, used it nvery adroitly in a facebook status when facebook statuses still had to follow "is". ... He wrote ... "is, after all, your wonderwall." [my first year on facebook statuses was all about trying to incorporate song lyrics as neatly as that]. Rory Kinnear said people loved it cos of the way Liam sang the words "WIEENDING" and "BLIEENDING". For me, though, it was all about the way he sang the first word "Today" and then the way he sang "Maybe".
This was, of course, the second time Oasis had put "Maybe" at the centre of a heart-tugging song. Somehow or other I'd missed 'Live Forever' the previous year and didn't realise that Oasis were already capable of such straightforward beauty as 'Wonderwall' contained. Sadly, after those two, they became a band which were no longer "maybe" and very much "definitely" and that's rather been their downfall.
But, right at that moment, Noel and Liam Gallagher put all their eggs in one basket, released all the quality they has stored up inside them in their bid for world domination - the B-sides were, of course, outstanding too [Round Are Way, The Masterplan, such a hot streak, just think if they'd stored some of these songs up], and the "battle" of the next singles after those two, well that was a write-off. Oasis further upped the epic quotient with 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and Blur released the horrible 'Stereotypes', the very worst example of their art, and it was Oasis now that seemed to have the strength in depth. True, to an extent. 'What's the Story' still had 'Cast No Shadow', it had the title track, 'She's Electric' and 'Champagne Supernova', 'The Great Escape' was overlong and had a few stinkers (though there are three more Blur crackers on it, I'd say, namely 'He Thought of Cars', 'Yuko and Hiro', and my very favourite, 'Best Days').
And what since? Well, Oasis were never that good again, there's no denying. A few decent singles, but the chemistry between the two brothers became corrosive and obstructive and I think they're better off apart for now. And Blur - well, they've all gone on to a variety of delights and also put a few more excellent albums and ultimately, perhaps, the triumph is Damon Albarn's - the full range of what he's achieved since then beggars belief, and he can look at it all and say, you know what, Wonderwall may have kicked The Universal out of the park back in 1995, but on a glorious August evening in 2012, they were both being sung back by 60,000 people in separate locations in London town. And Blur were the chosen band of the people, playing the Olympics closing concert across the city in Hyde Park. And there was Liam Gallagher in the Olympic Stadium, not a fearsome firebrand but just another 40-plus establishment celebrity, without his brother, the song's creator (who'd turned the gig down), starting out rather nervous and a little bit flat, before turning it around and getting the singalong the song deserved.
Because, after all, what is a Wonderwall, except a 1968 film soundtracked by George Harrison?
Well, it's a beautiful song in a minor key which actually has excellent lyrics and lovely strings, and it's one of the few songs which has had that effect on me in my life, and yes, it's a little embarrassing to say that now, because it's such a cliche, and it's Oasis, and they were lumpy and got dull quickly, but hey, it still stops me in my tracks if it catches me in the right mood now.
Song 1: The State I Am In
The State I Am In - Belle and Sebastian
Yes, I am a child of Britpop, yes, I am an indie kid, but I'd be lying if I said I came to it by the conventional super-cool routes. I was still listening to Capital Radio, or at best Virgin Radio, in 1996, and still buying my tapes (not even CDs yet) at Our Price (or at best HMV) Ealing Broadway. Thus it was unusually serendipitous that I found myself listening to a Radio 1 session (John Peel or Steve Lamacq or Mark Radcliffe, can't quite recall) on a summer evening in 1996 and it was a performance by a band called Belle and Sebastian of a song called 'The State I Am In'.
Now, whatever else I'd learnt about indie musicians in my 2 years of reading NME at that point, they were definitely cool, impenetrable, took drugs and didn't go to church or talk about children's TV.
So, when the band in session was announced as Belle and Sebastian, my ears perked up. But is it an ironic, mean use of the lovable cartoon about a boy and his dog in the Pyrenees, i wondered?
"I was surprised; I was happy for a day in 1975, and I was puzzled by a dream that stayed with me all day in 1995".
So far so good! And that voice ... so fragile, so teenagery, so smart, so indie, but not indie like Oasis, thank goodness. Back then, B and S really were lo-fi and incapable, I remember lots of bum notes but I remember the song developing, and thinking I liked the way it was going. It was easy to follow the story, it was funny and then it started to talk about priests and churches and sins and providence, and these were the subjects that had been bothering me for these last six years, not drugs and Camden, not even clumsy politics (not yet!) and he actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
So that was the start of Belle and Sebastian for me. Being as how I was still a bit useless then and how Tigermilk was very limited edition and how they weren't really in NME, that was it for a while. Something I'd heard, that I'd warmed to, but I went on listening to Bob Dylan and Blur and the Manic Street Preachers and The Jam and Spiritualized and Van Morrison and they had quite enough for me for the time being.
But I was lucky to go to university in Scotland and to have pretty cool Scottish friends, so, for my first couple of years there, B and S began to filter into my consciousness as real cult concern, till finally in 2000, I dived fully in (my first B and S purchase was actually the reissued 'Tigermilk' - still on tape though, blimey! - beginning with 'The State I Am In') and haven't looked back since.
So what are Belle and Sebastian and what is The State I Am In? I'll answer the first question.
They are The Smiths of my generation. Yes, indeed. It wasn't me that first proffered that theory (it was an article I read suggesting that there wasn't actually a Smiths of my generation but that B and S were as close as it got) but I wholeheartedly espouse it.
It's easy to forget how much of an odd little self-contained cult B and S were until 2001. They hardly ever played live, didn't give interviews, they had a name which implied they were a double act and they sang songs about themselves. I didn't even know what Stuart Murdoch looked like. I just remember hearing that he was older than he ought to be.
The NME, as epitomised by powerhouse journalist Steven Wells - the kind of writer 50% of whose stuff you love with a passion, 50% of which you loath and want to send him death threats, the best kind really - hated them, hated them with fervour. I remember him writing about how he'd found himseld playing football with Stuart Murdoch and he was, inexplicably, brilliant and an extremely nice man and that made the weedy wetness of the music all the more unforgivable. It's true that Stuart Murdoch's voice and songwriting does not scream of a brilliant footballer, but he's always been an odd bean, and as the band became more open, more understanding grew.
He was a perennial student who'd lost a huge chunk of his 20s to M.E., a dreamer, a fantasist, an actual Christian, a long distance runner, a real human being, not a rock star.
And being a B and S fan defined who you were in a way that no other band of that era did. Twee, proper, sensitive indie is defined by B and S. No one told you to like them, you heard them and felt here was a band created just for you. There was no Sebastian but there was actually a Bel, but God know what order it all came in.
Extraordinarily, they won a Brit award in 1999, the first sign that they weren't content to stay on the margins forever.
And so began their coming out party, interviews, Top of the Pops, Jools Holland, star producers, it all followed (as, sadly, did the departure of two founding members, first Stuart David who went on to be Looper and also a novelist, and also, of course, said Bel, Isobel Campbell, who has been very successful in her own right, and whose departure, though it denied the band a bit of its cultish magic, certainly seems to have reduced the tension and made band politics a bit easier). And references (as a cultural signifier) in Hollywood films. They haven't become a MASSIVE band but they have become a big band on both sides of the Atlantic (Top 20 albums in the US, live at the Hollywood Bowl, headlining festivals, even creating their own festival).
They really learnt how to play - I've seen them several times since 2001 and the quality and sheer muscularity has got better and better - and Stuart Murdoch's voice got stronger and stronger. Their albums aren't really quite as good as they used to be, but they're still giving it a very good shot and keeping a high standard, they're certainly more eclectic (a little less funkin might be preferred).
And yet, even after all this time, for me, 'The State I Am In' IS Belle Sebastian. Well, strictly speaking, 'Belle and Sebastian', another song on the Dog on Wheels EP, IS Belle and Sebastian, but I'd have to be a smug, witless fool to point that out.
'The State I Am In' is a glorious, wonderful, song which i'm not sure they've ever bettered. It's a builder, a grower, a lyrical tour de force which tells you everything you need to know about its writer. It's vulnerable but sly and daring, it's intricate yet ends up being anthemic.
On 'Tigermilk's second track 'Expectations', Murdoch sings about "making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay". Well, I'm going to add to my previous bold pronouncement. B and S are not just the Smiths of my generation, they're also the Velvet Underground of my generation. Only a few thousand people bought that debut album but how many of them were inspired to form a band? How much music on both sides of the Atlantic has sounded like B and S since, tuneful, literate, yes, fey, girl/boy, jangly. I've had countless new bands described to me as Belle and Sebastian-y. Of course, they didn't arise in a vacuum - Love, The Velvets, Felt, Orange Juice etc, went before, but I do believe Belle and Sebastian and The State I Am In were something new, unique, influential and priceless.
Yes, I am a child of Britpop, yes, I am an indie kid, but I'd be lying if I said I came to it by the conventional super-cool routes. I was still listening to Capital Radio, or at best Virgin Radio, in 1996, and still buying my tapes (not even CDs yet) at Our Price (or at best HMV) Ealing Broadway. Thus it was unusually serendipitous that I found myself listening to a Radio 1 session (John Peel or Steve Lamacq or Mark Radcliffe, can't quite recall) on a summer evening in 1996 and it was a performance by a band called Belle and Sebastian of a song called 'The State I Am In'.
Now, whatever else I'd learnt about indie musicians in my 2 years of reading NME at that point, they were definitely cool, impenetrable, took drugs and didn't go to church or talk about children's TV.
So, when the band in session was announced as Belle and Sebastian, my ears perked up. But is it an ironic, mean use of the lovable cartoon about a boy and his dog in the Pyrenees, i wondered?
"I was surprised; I was happy for a day in 1975, and I was puzzled by a dream that stayed with me all day in 1995".
So far so good! And that voice ... so fragile, so teenagery, so smart, so indie, but not indie like Oasis, thank goodness. Back then, B and S really were lo-fi and incapable, I remember lots of bum notes but I remember the song developing, and thinking I liked the way it was going. It was easy to follow the story, it was funny and then it started to talk about priests and churches and sins and providence, and these were the subjects that had been bothering me for these last six years, not drugs and Camden, not even clumsy politics (not yet!) and he actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
So that was the start of Belle and Sebastian for me. Being as how I was still a bit useless then and how Tigermilk was very limited edition and how they weren't really in NME, that was it for a while. Something I'd heard, that I'd warmed to, but I went on listening to Bob Dylan and Blur and the Manic Street Preachers and The Jam and Spiritualized and Van Morrison and they had quite enough for me for the time being.
But I was lucky to go to university in Scotland and to have pretty cool Scottish friends, so, for my first couple of years there, B and S began to filter into my consciousness as real cult concern, till finally in 2000, I dived fully in (my first B and S purchase was actually the reissued 'Tigermilk' - still on tape though, blimey! - beginning with 'The State I Am In') and haven't looked back since.
So what are Belle and Sebastian and what is The State I Am In? I'll answer the first question.
They are The Smiths of my generation. Yes, indeed. It wasn't me that first proffered that theory (it was an article I read suggesting that there wasn't actually a Smiths of my generation but that B and S were as close as it got) but I wholeheartedly espouse it.
It's easy to forget how much of an odd little self-contained cult B and S were until 2001. They hardly ever played live, didn't give interviews, they had a name which implied they were a double act and they sang songs about themselves. I didn't even know what Stuart Murdoch looked like. I just remember hearing that he was older than he ought to be.
The NME, as epitomised by powerhouse journalist Steven Wells - the kind of writer 50% of whose stuff you love with a passion, 50% of which you loath and want to send him death threats, the best kind really - hated them, hated them with fervour. I remember him writing about how he'd found himseld playing football with Stuart Murdoch and he was, inexplicably, brilliant and an extremely nice man and that made the weedy wetness of the music all the more unforgivable. It's true that Stuart Murdoch's voice and songwriting does not scream of a brilliant footballer, but he's always been an odd bean, and as the band became more open, more understanding grew.
He was a perennial student who'd lost a huge chunk of his 20s to M.E., a dreamer, a fantasist, an actual Christian, a long distance runner, a real human being, not a rock star.
And being a B and S fan defined who you were in a way that no other band of that era did. Twee, proper, sensitive indie is defined by B and S. No one told you to like them, you heard them and felt here was a band created just for you. There was no Sebastian but there was actually a Bel, but God know what order it all came in.
Extraordinarily, they won a Brit award in 1999, the first sign that they weren't content to stay on the margins forever.
And so began their coming out party, interviews, Top of the Pops, Jools Holland, star producers, it all followed (as, sadly, did the departure of two founding members, first Stuart David who went on to be Looper and also a novelist, and also, of course, said Bel, Isobel Campbell, who has been very successful in her own right, and whose departure, though it denied the band a bit of its cultish magic, certainly seems to have reduced the tension and made band politics a bit easier). And references (as a cultural signifier) in Hollywood films. They haven't become a MASSIVE band but they have become a big band on both sides of the Atlantic (Top 20 albums in the US, live at the Hollywood Bowl, headlining festivals, even creating their own festival).
They really learnt how to play - I've seen them several times since 2001 and the quality and sheer muscularity has got better and better - and Stuart Murdoch's voice got stronger and stronger. Their albums aren't really quite as good as they used to be, but they're still giving it a very good shot and keeping a high standard, they're certainly more eclectic (a little less funkin might be preferred).
And yet, even after all this time, for me, 'The State I Am In' IS Belle Sebastian. Well, strictly speaking, 'Belle and Sebastian', another song on the Dog on Wheels EP, IS Belle and Sebastian, but I'd have to be a smug, witless fool to point that out.
'The State I Am In' is a glorious, wonderful, song which i'm not sure they've ever bettered. It's a builder, a grower, a lyrical tour de force which tells you everything you need to know about its writer. It's vulnerable but sly and daring, it's intricate yet ends up being anthemic.
On 'Tigermilk's second track 'Expectations', Murdoch sings about "making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay". Well, I'm going to add to my previous bold pronouncement. B and S are not just the Smiths of my generation, they're also the Velvet Underground of my generation. Only a few thousand people bought that debut album but how many of them were inspired to form a band? How much music on both sides of the Atlantic has sounded like B and S since, tuneful, literate, yes, fey, girl/boy, jangly. I've had countless new bands described to me as Belle and Sebastian-y. Of course, they didn't arise in a vacuum - Love, The Velvets, Felt, Orange Juice etc, went before, but I do believe Belle and Sebastian and The State I Am In were something new, unique, influential and priceless.
Saturday, 29 December 2012
31 Songs
So my sister's given me Nick Hornby's '31 Songs' for Christmas, which is a lovely present and I'm very much enjoying working my way through it. I've owned some similar books but not owned this one myself - my former flatmate Michael owned it and I certainly browsed it from time to time, but to actually read it properly is a treat, as Nick Hornby is, of course, a proper skilled writer, not just a pop archivist, and he has crafted it just so, while seeming not to be crafting it at all.
And you may have noticed - '31 Songs' has a certain similarity to the title of this blog, and it was quite conceivably on my mind when I came up with the title. Which made me think a few things.
Firstly, I remembered how few people have I ever really made aware of the blog (which began, gosh, almost four years ago), including my family. When I got the book, I wanted to say "aah, good thinking, this fits in well with my blog" but then held back.
Come to think of it, I do now remember directing my sister to the very first post, the list of 101 Songs, but not to all the nonsense that followed. Really, I've only ever let about 8 people know this blog exists, perhaps understandably, and not really with any discretionary process. For example, the above former flatmate Michael has I think never read it, though I imagine it would be of some interest to him, and I hope would not be put out to discover it had been going all this time without his knowledge, but the truth is what happened is, when I started it out, and was a little embarrassed about the whole thing, I vaguely mentioned it, and if someone followed up on that, that was fine, but I didn't want to push anyone to read it. How frightful. Anyway, Michael, if this is you reading this now, you've got a lot ot catch up on!
Blogger now has precise stats so I know how many people ever look at it - not many but always a steady few, and not just my friends. Ironically, the entry through which most people come to it (one presumes through google search terms) is "10 Songs about Embarrassment, Shame ...", which is slightly delicious, as what we have is a man deeply prone to embarrassment having his deeply embarrassing words being read by people who themselves are pretty prone to embarrassment, otherwise why would they have searched for songs about embarassment? How embarrassing! And the most embarrassing thing is that that is, in my opinion, a pretty undistinguished entry, and i'd much rather they'd found the blog through, I don't know, 'Songs about The End of the World' or something. I nailed that one ...
Anyway, back to '31 Songs', wherein Nick Hornby actually does something different from what i've done in this blog - he literally just writes about his love for 31 individual songs, a lovely simple idea, which you'd have to be an extremely popular and skilled writer to get away with publishing and people actually buying, reading and enjoying. Cos, really, anyone could do that. If I could walk into a publisher and go "I want to wrote a bit about 31 songs I like" and that would eventually end up with the The Spectator saying it was "as good a book about pop music as I have read in many years" I'd be a very lucky man.
But I'm not Nick Hornby. Though in a way I am. And that's the genius of Nick Hornby. I've very much enjoyed 4 (or maybe 5) of his books but never once thought that's something I couldn't do. But I couldn't. And he does write about people you think are you. Even if they are him.
Probably his most nailed-on up-my-street book is 'High Fidelity', the book about music obsession. [Incidentally, I don't quite buy his "I'm not a total and utter music geek" shtick he's putting across in '31 Songs'. No one who writes about full-on music geekdom like he does in 'High Fidelity' could not be a full-on music geek. They just couldn't].
Goodness, it's a long old time since I read it, as it helped me through my first few weeks in Kenya in early 1997. The album I was mainly listening to then was 'Blood on the Tracks', of which the first track is 'Tangled Up in Blue', which contains the lyric "And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal, pouring off of every page like they were written on my soul" which is a little how I felt about parts of 'High Fidelity', though I was a callow 18 year old gap year student, rather than a 30 something independent record store owner. Of course, the film is cracking too, part of the Cusack hot streak, full of lovely music - the first time I attempted to see it at the cinema in Kensington, with Stephen, a migraine took hold of me, and, reader, let's work through this embarrassment together, I had to throw up in the loos and scuttle home. Aah, memories, misty, watercolour memories of the way we were ...
But, anyway, so, anyway, ok, all I'm actually saying is, how's about I do a little of that for a while, steal Nick Hornby's idea and just write a section on an individual song and its place in the world, whether my own world or the world as a whole. Although in my final list of 101 songs (keep up, there have been lots of lists of 101 songs!) I did write a few lines on each of those beloved songs, i've rarely (as I recently did with Going Underground) delved deep into an individual song, like Hornby does so skilfully.
Probably better if some of the songs are pretty well-known, I've already had a little think, and here are some songs I might write about
Wonderwall
Hallelujah
Dry the Rain
Killing Me Softly
Heatwave
The State I Am In
One Day Like This
Am I being too obvious? These might be songs you hate. They might be songs I hate. But better, I think, to give readers a chance of knowing what i'm talking about. Anyway, that is very much subject to change, and it won't necessarily stop the flow of writing on other subjects.
I'm really beginning to get into the second incarnation of this blog, after a stuttering start. I feel the writing's been quite poor so far, but hopefully it can get better again with more practice.
And you may have noticed - '31 Songs' has a certain similarity to the title of this blog, and it was quite conceivably on my mind when I came up with the title. Which made me think a few things.
Firstly, I remembered how few people have I ever really made aware of the blog (which began, gosh, almost four years ago), including my family. When I got the book, I wanted to say "aah, good thinking, this fits in well with my blog" but then held back.
Come to think of it, I do now remember directing my sister to the very first post, the list of 101 Songs, but not to all the nonsense that followed. Really, I've only ever let about 8 people know this blog exists, perhaps understandably, and not really with any discretionary process. For example, the above former flatmate Michael has I think never read it, though I imagine it would be of some interest to him, and I hope would not be put out to discover it had been going all this time without his knowledge, but the truth is what happened is, when I started it out, and was a little embarrassed about the whole thing, I vaguely mentioned it, and if someone followed up on that, that was fine, but I didn't want to push anyone to read it. How frightful. Anyway, Michael, if this is you reading this now, you've got a lot ot catch up on!
Blogger now has precise stats so I know how many people ever look at it - not many but always a steady few, and not just my friends. Ironically, the entry through which most people come to it (one presumes through google search terms) is "10 Songs about Embarrassment, Shame ...", which is slightly delicious, as what we have is a man deeply prone to embarrassment having his deeply embarrassing words being read by people who themselves are pretty prone to embarrassment, otherwise why would they have searched for songs about embarassment? How embarrassing! And the most embarrassing thing is that that is, in my opinion, a pretty undistinguished entry, and i'd much rather they'd found the blog through, I don't know, 'Songs about The End of the World' or something. I nailed that one ...
Anyway, back to '31 Songs', wherein Nick Hornby actually does something different from what i've done in this blog - he literally just writes about his love for 31 individual songs, a lovely simple idea, which you'd have to be an extremely popular and skilled writer to get away with publishing and people actually buying, reading and enjoying. Cos, really, anyone could do that. If I could walk into a publisher and go "I want to wrote a bit about 31 songs I like" and that would eventually end up with the The Spectator saying it was "as good a book about pop music as I have read in many years" I'd be a very lucky man.
But I'm not Nick Hornby. Though in a way I am. And that's the genius of Nick Hornby. I've very much enjoyed 4 (or maybe 5) of his books but never once thought that's something I couldn't do. But I couldn't. And he does write about people you think are you. Even if they are him.
Probably his most nailed-on up-my-street book is 'High Fidelity', the book about music obsession. [Incidentally, I don't quite buy his "I'm not a total and utter music geek" shtick he's putting across in '31 Songs'. No one who writes about full-on music geekdom like he does in 'High Fidelity' could not be a full-on music geek. They just couldn't].
Goodness, it's a long old time since I read it, as it helped me through my first few weeks in Kenya in early 1997. The album I was mainly listening to then was 'Blood on the Tracks', of which the first track is 'Tangled Up in Blue', which contains the lyric "And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal, pouring off of every page like they were written on my soul" which is a little how I felt about parts of 'High Fidelity', though I was a callow 18 year old gap year student, rather than a 30 something independent record store owner. Of course, the film is cracking too, part of the Cusack hot streak, full of lovely music - the first time I attempted to see it at the cinema in Kensington, with Stephen, a migraine took hold of me, and, reader, let's work through this embarrassment together, I had to throw up in the loos and scuttle home. Aah, memories, misty, watercolour memories of the way we were ...
But, anyway, so, anyway, ok, all I'm actually saying is, how's about I do a little of that for a while, steal Nick Hornby's idea and just write a section on an individual song and its place in the world, whether my own world or the world as a whole. Although in my final list of 101 songs (keep up, there have been lots of lists of 101 songs!) I did write a few lines on each of those beloved songs, i've rarely (as I recently did with Going Underground) delved deep into an individual song, like Hornby does so skilfully.
Probably better if some of the songs are pretty well-known, I've already had a little think, and here are some songs I might write about
Wonderwall
Hallelujah
Dry the Rain
Killing Me Softly
Heatwave
The State I Am In
One Day Like This
Am I being too obvious? These might be songs you hate. They might be songs I hate. But better, I think, to give readers a chance of knowing what i'm talking about. Anyway, that is very much subject to change, and it won't necessarily stop the flow of writing on other subjects.
I'm really beginning to get into the second incarnation of this blog, after a stuttering start. I feel the writing's been quite poor so far, but hopefully it can get better again with more practice.
Friday, 28 December 2012
2012 was undoubtedly a year
... for sport not music?
Am I wrong?
Sometimes one just has to tick one off like that.
The sport of 2012, the TV of 2012, the films of (late) 2012 will, I think, go down as glorious and memorable and wonderful. The music? Will it? You tell me.
It could be my passion and interest is waning, but i'm still buying lots of stuff and giving it at least one or two listens, still getting music magazines, checking pitchfork and NME websites daily, I still WANT to hear the best stuff and love the best stuff and feel cool and sound cool.
It could be i'm at that awkward age, neither one thing nor the other. The hip youngsters at NME and Pitchfork have their own lists of the best stuff of the year and it's all Grimes and Alt-J and Kendrick Lamar and Chromatics and Palma Violets and what's all the shooting aboot ... and Uncut has their list and it's all Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan and Bill Fay and Bruce Springsteen and Dexys, and I've got a foot in both camps I suppose, but what's happened is that the folk who were cool 40 and writing for Uncut 15 years ago have kept their jobs and got old and just love the old folk now, and the people who run NME and Pitchfork have kept replacing their hip young writers with new hip young writers and they're genuinely young and, well, like ever so slightly different music than me.
And the album with a foot in every camp is the Frank Ocean album 'Channel Orange', which I've heard bits of throughout the year and just bought and listened to in its entirety and I don't think it's going to change my life though I may come to like it but I don't really "get" it yet.
But that represents how I feel about almost everything this year. Bands of my era, the kind that were acclaimed a few years ago but are now considered a bit middle-aged, released albums I thought were pretty good but I can admit were not magnificent (Shins, Walkmen, Regina Spektor, Spiritualized, Rufus Wainwright etc), various old folk released albums which Uncut and old rock critics wet themselves over but weren't really that amazing (Dylan, Cohen, Dexys, Weller etc, though hats off for Paul Buchanan and Bill Fay for genuinely unexpected minor triumphs) and I've tried to get down with the kids, really I have, and I'm enjoying various things, but things need a little more time.
I nearly always do an end-of-year list but I'm not sure I can muster that this time.
I like the sound of the new Nick Cave song 'We No Who 'U' R', I like 'Bad for Me' by Brendan Benson, 'How' by Regina Spektor', love 'Losing You' by Solange', 'Heaven' by the Walkmen, 'Mid-Air' by Paul Buchanan and 'So Long you Pretty Thing' by Spiritualized, 'Under the Westway' by Blur, 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' by Tame Impala and 'It's Only Life' by The Shins. Aah, that appears to be 10 songs, so perhaps those are my BEST 10 SONGS OF THE YEAR! after all.
But I ought to be able to do better than that, and I'm not sure I've even got a favourite album of 2012 yet. I'll let you know halfway through 2013.
The end-of-year lists are a handy way to catch up on the consensus and does usually produce some big winners, so I've got a few things cued up for further attention.
Although we decry the pop charts and how it's all ghastly ShitBag feat TossFace these days, though I don't follow it that closely, Carly Rae Jepsen's song and Gotye's song were perfectly appealing and unusual chart-toppers, Emeli Sande is not an abominable breakout star of the year, and Robbie Williams did the first song by him I haven't absolutely loathed ever, so it can't be all bad.
But I'll tell you what was. all. bad. The Band of Horses album. What went wrong, Band of Horses? One of my favourite live shows ever, less than two years ago, with several songs which have ripped my soul clean off its hinges, but they have lost their mojo entirely, and represent all the bad cliches of the beardy Americana which is so close to my heart.
So come on 2013, Let's have a few classics. Newsom? National? Cave? Janelle Monae? Midlake? Heaven forfend, the Furries? Or let's hope that it's someone entirely unexpected who appeals to NME youngsters, Uncut beardies and disgruntled 34 year old sports fans alike.
Am I wrong?
Sometimes one just has to tick one off like that.
The sport of 2012, the TV of 2012, the films of (late) 2012 will, I think, go down as glorious and memorable and wonderful. The music? Will it? You tell me.
It could be my passion and interest is waning, but i'm still buying lots of stuff and giving it at least one or two listens, still getting music magazines, checking pitchfork and NME websites daily, I still WANT to hear the best stuff and love the best stuff and feel cool and sound cool.
It could be i'm at that awkward age, neither one thing nor the other. The hip youngsters at NME and Pitchfork have their own lists of the best stuff of the year and it's all Grimes and Alt-J and Kendrick Lamar and Chromatics and Palma Violets and what's all the shooting aboot ... and Uncut has their list and it's all Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan and Bill Fay and Bruce Springsteen and Dexys, and I've got a foot in both camps I suppose, but what's happened is that the folk who were cool 40 and writing for Uncut 15 years ago have kept their jobs and got old and just love the old folk now, and the people who run NME and Pitchfork have kept replacing their hip young writers with new hip young writers and they're genuinely young and, well, like ever so slightly different music than me.
And the album with a foot in every camp is the Frank Ocean album 'Channel Orange', which I've heard bits of throughout the year and just bought and listened to in its entirety and I don't think it's going to change my life though I may come to like it but I don't really "get" it yet.
But that represents how I feel about almost everything this year. Bands of my era, the kind that were acclaimed a few years ago but are now considered a bit middle-aged, released albums I thought were pretty good but I can admit were not magnificent (Shins, Walkmen, Regina Spektor, Spiritualized, Rufus Wainwright etc), various old folk released albums which Uncut and old rock critics wet themselves over but weren't really that amazing (Dylan, Cohen, Dexys, Weller etc, though hats off for Paul Buchanan and Bill Fay for genuinely unexpected minor triumphs) and I've tried to get down with the kids, really I have, and I'm enjoying various things, but things need a little more time.
I nearly always do an end-of-year list but I'm not sure I can muster that this time.
I like the sound of the new Nick Cave song 'We No Who 'U' R', I like 'Bad for Me' by Brendan Benson, 'How' by Regina Spektor', love 'Losing You' by Solange', 'Heaven' by the Walkmen, 'Mid-Air' by Paul Buchanan and 'So Long you Pretty Thing' by Spiritualized, 'Under the Westway' by Blur, 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' by Tame Impala and 'It's Only Life' by The Shins. Aah, that appears to be 10 songs, so perhaps those are my BEST 10 SONGS OF THE YEAR! after all.
But I ought to be able to do better than that, and I'm not sure I've even got a favourite album of 2012 yet. I'll let you know halfway through 2013.
The end-of-year lists are a handy way to catch up on the consensus and does usually produce some big winners, so I've got a few things cued up for further attention.
Although we decry the pop charts and how it's all ghastly ShitBag feat TossFace these days, though I don't follow it that closely, Carly Rae Jepsen's song and Gotye's song were perfectly appealing and unusual chart-toppers, Emeli Sande is not an abominable breakout star of the year, and Robbie Williams did the first song by him I haven't absolutely loathed ever, so it can't be all bad.
But I'll tell you what was. all. bad. The Band of Horses album. What went wrong, Band of Horses? One of my favourite live shows ever, less than two years ago, with several songs which have ripped my soul clean off its hinges, but they have lost their mojo entirely, and represent all the bad cliches of the beardy Americana which is so close to my heart.
So come on 2013, Let's have a few classics. Newsom? National? Cave? Janelle Monae? Midlake? Heaven forfend, the Furries? Or let's hope that it's someone entirely unexpected who appeals to NME youngsters, Uncut beardies and disgruntled 34 year old sports fans alike.
The Alt-Country Middleweights
Right then, The Alt-Country Middleweights! A blazing pronouncement of intent. How many millions of google searches must there be each day under the term "alt-country middleweights". And what the fuck am I talking about?
I'll tell you. I'll tell you the one and only time I've seen this wonderful expression used and how it's become, for me, a definitive descriptive term.
It was in Q magazine (or maybe Uncut, sheeete) and it was the little tag line at the top of a little review of the 2006 Josh Rouse album 'Subtitulo' - his 6th full length solo album - and I'm pretty certain it said something like "Another solid effort by persevering alt-country middleweight" before awarding said album 3 stars. Solid, consistent, skilled, all together middleweight, that's Josh Rouse and his Josh Rouse albums. A view, I think, shared by Mr Josh Rouse himself, it seems ... one of the two times I saw him live, he said "Friday night in London, and here you are, at a Josh Rouse concert" in evident bemusement that anyone should be paying good money to see him sing his little songs when they ought to be painting the city red at the weekend.
And yet I happen to think Josh Rouse is one of the greatest songwriters on God's earth, and that his run of albums from 'Under Cold Blue Stars' through '1972' and 'Nashville' to 'Subtitulo' (in particular the middle two) is perhaps the most consistent streak of elegant and heart-tugging songcraft of this century.
But that does not necessarily mean that the description of him as a middleweight, however it was meant, is entirely unfair. He's probably not sold 100,000 records in his life. He IS a middleweight, if that. Maybe more of a welter. He doesn't aim to fill out stadiums, he doesn't bring regimes crashing down, he's no Muse, or U2, or even Arcade Fire. He's no heavyweight. Equally, these are lovely songs with pop melodies, he's not wilfully obscure, not anti-pop or anti-folk or post-rock or punk or lo-fi or anything like that. Nor is he a fragile desperado, no Elliott Smith or Daniel Johnston. He's no bantamweight.
His album '1972' pays tribute to the MOR glory of the early 70s, Carole King, James Taylor etc. He's "middle" in that sense too. His music's not going to scare anybody. But actual MOR got massive, got heavyweight. And generally, got a bit shit.
The alt-county middleweights, the Marvin Haglers and Sergio Martinezes of the music world, who stayed just where they were, knew their natural weight and didn't try to bulk up and take on the Klitschkos, those are the music stars who float my little boat. Yes, that was a boxing reference, and, like Mark Kozelek (alt-country middleweight of some renown), I'm going to stay on the boxing theme for a short while.
The heavyweight division is no longer where it's at and hasn't been for some time. Dull and lifeless, full of bloated flabbies (though perhaps slowly on its way back). The real action is in the middle divisions - the four kings of the 80s were Hearns, Hagler, Leonard and Duran and since then we've had the like of Toney, McCallum, Jones, Benn, Eubank, Martinez, Hopkins, even Mayweather and Pacquiao at light-middleweight and the likes of Calzaghe and Froch at super-middle.
This is where the really great fights featuring the best athletes happen. And what happens if they bulk up and try to take on the big guns, like Jones and Toney - generally undignified disaster strikes. Lean, taut and savvy, middleweight and proud.
Of course, one can only take the boxing analogy so far. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with grandeur in music, or in really good little bands getting really, surprisingly, successful. In fact it's rather super. The Decemberists, for example, are no longer alt-country middleweights. They've had a Number 1 album in the States. Nor is Ryan Adams. He was always aiming for the stars, however much he might try to deny it (indeed, one might say he's a little of a Roy Jones - he bulked up to take on the big guns, it didn't work out, he tried to slim down again, and was never quite the same). Or Wilco, or The National, or Bright Eyes, or Fleet Foxes. Those are the alt-rock heavyweights, and they're superduper too.
But here's a little playlist of alt-country middleweights - song-crafters, all. Really, for certain people like me, this uninspiring band of also-rans who've probably not sold 1 million records between them are better and more important not just than Elvis Presley and U2, but also than Mozart and Shakespeare and Picasso and Kubrick and Virgil, and, shucks, even Dan Brown.
All hail the alt-country middleweights
Josh Rouse - Slaveship
The Jayhawks - Blue
The Pernice Brothers - Bryte Side
Midlake - Van Occupanther
Lucinda Williams - Blue
Lambchop - Up With People
Josh Ritter - Kathleen
Iron and Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth
Ron Sexsmith - Not About to Lose
Brendan Benson - The Alternative to Love
* I realise I haven't written anything about the "alt-country" side of the phrase ... well, if you don't know about that ... well, I suppose Alt-country has a resaonably broad description of American guitar music of the last 25 years which is not, as such, urban. They say it started with Uncle Tupelo, or maybe Gram Parsons, and it's a lot better than, and sells a fraction of the amount of, mainstream country. It is what grown-up British music fans love.
I'll tell you. I'll tell you the one and only time I've seen this wonderful expression used and how it's become, for me, a definitive descriptive term.
It was in Q magazine (or maybe Uncut, sheeete) and it was the little tag line at the top of a little review of the 2006 Josh Rouse album 'Subtitulo' - his 6th full length solo album - and I'm pretty certain it said something like "Another solid effort by persevering alt-country middleweight" before awarding said album 3 stars. Solid, consistent, skilled, all together middleweight, that's Josh Rouse and his Josh Rouse albums. A view, I think, shared by Mr Josh Rouse himself, it seems ... one of the two times I saw him live, he said "Friday night in London, and here you are, at a Josh Rouse concert" in evident bemusement that anyone should be paying good money to see him sing his little songs when they ought to be painting the city red at the weekend.
And yet I happen to think Josh Rouse is one of the greatest songwriters on God's earth, and that his run of albums from 'Under Cold Blue Stars' through '1972' and 'Nashville' to 'Subtitulo' (in particular the middle two) is perhaps the most consistent streak of elegant and heart-tugging songcraft of this century.
But that does not necessarily mean that the description of him as a middleweight, however it was meant, is entirely unfair. He's probably not sold 100,000 records in his life. He IS a middleweight, if that. Maybe more of a welter. He doesn't aim to fill out stadiums, he doesn't bring regimes crashing down, he's no Muse, or U2, or even Arcade Fire. He's no heavyweight. Equally, these are lovely songs with pop melodies, he's not wilfully obscure, not anti-pop or anti-folk or post-rock or punk or lo-fi or anything like that. Nor is he a fragile desperado, no Elliott Smith or Daniel Johnston. He's no bantamweight.
His album '1972' pays tribute to the MOR glory of the early 70s, Carole King, James Taylor etc. He's "middle" in that sense too. His music's not going to scare anybody. But actual MOR got massive, got heavyweight. And generally, got a bit shit.
The alt-county middleweights, the Marvin Haglers and Sergio Martinezes of the music world, who stayed just where they were, knew their natural weight and didn't try to bulk up and take on the Klitschkos, those are the music stars who float my little boat. Yes, that was a boxing reference, and, like Mark Kozelek (alt-country middleweight of some renown), I'm going to stay on the boxing theme for a short while.
The heavyweight division is no longer where it's at and hasn't been for some time. Dull and lifeless, full of bloated flabbies (though perhaps slowly on its way back). The real action is in the middle divisions - the four kings of the 80s were Hearns, Hagler, Leonard and Duran and since then we've had the like of Toney, McCallum, Jones, Benn, Eubank, Martinez, Hopkins, even Mayweather and Pacquiao at light-middleweight and the likes of Calzaghe and Froch at super-middle.
This is where the really great fights featuring the best athletes happen. And what happens if they bulk up and try to take on the big guns, like Jones and Toney - generally undignified disaster strikes. Lean, taut and savvy, middleweight and proud.
Of course, one can only take the boxing analogy so far. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with grandeur in music, or in really good little bands getting really, surprisingly, successful. In fact it's rather super. The Decemberists, for example, are no longer alt-country middleweights. They've had a Number 1 album in the States. Nor is Ryan Adams. He was always aiming for the stars, however much he might try to deny it (indeed, one might say he's a little of a Roy Jones - he bulked up to take on the big guns, it didn't work out, he tried to slim down again, and was never quite the same). Or Wilco, or The National, or Bright Eyes, or Fleet Foxes. Those are the alt-rock heavyweights, and they're superduper too.
But here's a little playlist of alt-country middleweights - song-crafters, all. Really, for certain people like me, this uninspiring band of also-rans who've probably not sold 1 million records between them are better and more important not just than Elvis Presley and U2, but also than Mozart and Shakespeare and Picasso and Kubrick and Virgil, and, shucks, even Dan Brown.
All hail the alt-country middleweights
Josh Rouse - Slaveship
The Jayhawks - Blue
The Pernice Brothers - Bryte Side
Midlake - Van Occupanther
Lucinda Williams - Blue
Lambchop - Up With People
Josh Ritter - Kathleen
Iron and Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth
Ron Sexsmith - Not About to Lose
Brendan Benson - The Alternative to Love
* I realise I haven't written anything about the "alt-country" side of the phrase ... well, if you don't know about that ... well, I suppose Alt-country has a resaonably broad description of American guitar music of the last 25 years which is not, as such, urban. They say it started with Uncle Tupelo, or maybe Gram Parsons, and it's a lot better than, and sells a fraction of the amount of, mainstream country. It is what grown-up British music fans love.
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Magic moments ...
Just a brief post, as I can't get round to writing my next full-length missive, which, thrill to end all thrills, will be called 'The Alt-Country Middleweights' ... oh, what a tease I am.
This is just a little note about how the music world is full of glorious little footnotes and coincidences - three of which I'll bring to your attention now.
1. Eminem's 'My Name Is' takes its main sample from 'I Got The'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKISdd2mKzU (from about 2.20)
, a song by black, gay singer-songwriter Labi Siffre, most famous for writing 'It Must Be Love' and 'Something Inside So Strong'. Labi Siffre was born in Queen Charlotte's, Hammersmith, like yours truly, and also attended St Benedict's, Ealing, as I did, but the least said about that place the better. But the best bit, who were the session musicians on 'I Got The' so with their fingerprints all over one of the biggest hip-hop hits of the 90s - none other than Chas and Dave.
2. After Nick Drake's debut album 'Five Leaves Left' his producer Joe Boyd, (who wrote a tremeondous memoir called 'White Bicycles'), looked into exploring the commercial potential of Drake's superb material, so set up a session with an up-and-coming young pianist called Elton John (this is late 60s) where he covered various of Drake's songs, including this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGG1N6uryCI
Not bad at all, actually. And one further little titbit, the guitarist is Caleb Quaye, Finley Quaye's much older half-brother.
3. I had a long held fascination with the great American singer Paul Robeson, most famous for 'Ol Man River' - Robeson was one of the most famous men in the world in the early 1900s, a star of stage, screen and record, a great athlete before that, and even in 1948 mooted as a possible vice-presidential candidate. Imagine that, 60 years before Obama, 15 years before 'I Have a Dream', a black vice-presidential candidate. But Robeson has mainly been expunged from American history, because he was a communist, who made various trips to the Soviet Union. He was victimised, punished and died a broken and forgotten man.
The Manic Street Preachershad a song called 'Let Robeson Sing' on their otherwise highly disappointing 'Know Your Enemy' album. You may remember, 'Know Your Enemy' was the one where they played a concert for Fidel Castro in Cuba. 'Let Robeson Sing' is all about Paul Robeson, it's actually musically lovely, one of the few high points of the album, though lyrically it's a spectacularly clunky treatment of the subject (I'll write in full about the shaky greatness of the Manics in a later post).
I only found out yesterday that the idea originally was that Gruff Rhys (who as you all know is a man higher in my estimation than Paul Robeson, Nick Drake, even Ryan Giggs) was originally intended to sing this number with the Manics for Castro in Cuba. In the end, he sang it with them at the 02 in 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUZU_ILHFjk
and then in a solo gig he did later that week
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8lxDvk1PE
Beautiful! Who couldn't listen to Gruff talking for hours and hours ....
Anyway, hope those are reasonably enlightening, interesting and entertaining. Back to the alt-country middleweights soon ...
This is just a little note about how the music world is full of glorious little footnotes and coincidences - three of which I'll bring to your attention now.
1. Eminem's 'My Name Is' takes its main sample from 'I Got The'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKISdd2mKzU (from about 2.20)
, a song by black, gay singer-songwriter Labi Siffre, most famous for writing 'It Must Be Love' and 'Something Inside So Strong'. Labi Siffre was born in Queen Charlotte's, Hammersmith, like yours truly, and also attended St Benedict's, Ealing, as I did, but the least said about that place the better. But the best bit, who were the session musicians on 'I Got The' so with their fingerprints all over one of the biggest hip-hop hits of the 90s - none other than Chas and Dave.
2. After Nick Drake's debut album 'Five Leaves Left' his producer Joe Boyd, (who wrote a tremeondous memoir called 'White Bicycles'), looked into exploring the commercial potential of Drake's superb material, so set up a session with an up-and-coming young pianist called Elton John (this is late 60s) where he covered various of Drake's songs, including this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGG1N6uryCI
Not bad at all, actually. And one further little titbit, the guitarist is Caleb Quaye, Finley Quaye's much older half-brother.
3. I had a long held fascination with the great American singer Paul Robeson, most famous for 'Ol Man River' - Robeson was one of the most famous men in the world in the early 1900s, a star of stage, screen and record, a great athlete before that, and even in 1948 mooted as a possible vice-presidential candidate. Imagine that, 60 years before Obama, 15 years before 'I Have a Dream', a black vice-presidential candidate. But Robeson has mainly been expunged from American history, because he was a communist, who made various trips to the Soviet Union. He was victimised, punished and died a broken and forgotten man.
The Manic Street Preachershad a song called 'Let Robeson Sing' on their otherwise highly disappointing 'Know Your Enemy' album. You may remember, 'Know Your Enemy' was the one where they played a concert for Fidel Castro in Cuba. 'Let Robeson Sing' is all about Paul Robeson, it's actually musically lovely, one of the few high points of the album, though lyrically it's a spectacularly clunky treatment of the subject (I'll write in full about the shaky greatness of the Manics in a later post).
I only found out yesterday that the idea originally was that Gruff Rhys (who as you all know is a man higher in my estimation than Paul Robeson, Nick Drake, even Ryan Giggs) was originally intended to sing this number with the Manics for Castro in Cuba. In the end, he sang it with them at the 02 in 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUZU_ILHFjk
and then in a solo gig he did later that week
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8lxDvk1PE
Beautiful! Who couldn't listen to Gruff talking for hours and hours ....
Anyway, hope those are reasonably enlightening, interesting and entertaining. Back to the alt-country middleweights soon ...
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Going Underground
Does everyone have a defining song, the one that changed your life and set you on your musical path? If so, mine is undoubtedly, after all, Going Underground by The Jam.
There I was, a musical slug, listening to the Capital Radio Hall of Fame, a rundown of the "Greatest Songs of All Time" from 500 to 1, when there it was, at Number 248, sandwiched between Lionel Richie and the Eagles, or whatever, a whole different sound, a surge of adrenaline, a whole new way of looking at and listening to the world.
Back then, it wasn't so easy just to hear something and then enjoy it to one's heart content (I make it sound like the dark ages, that record shops didn't exist, but i had limited money, didn't know much about music, and just generally didn't get out much, also obviously there was no downloading). It was several months where I had the nerve, money and opportunity to buy The Jam's Greatest Hits from Ealing Broadway Our Price. From the day I bought it, I think I listened to Going Underground twice a day, at least, for a year. I sang along, got used to every cadence, every jagged guitar, every release of tension.
Thankfully, I learnt, Going Underground was not a one-off. The Jam's Greatest Hits is one of the finest singles collections of all time- a five year wonder with barely a misfire. Down in the Tube Station is pretty much as perfect to me as Going Underground, A Town Called Malice has got better and better with age, there's nothing not to like from In the City to Beat Surrender.
But Going Underground was the one. Depending on how you look at it, it is extraordinary that it was so low in the Hall of Fame or that it was there at all. It sounded so out of place, yet it truly was a pop smash hit, straight in at Number 1 - I was not a member of an exclusive club in my admiration.
It was a great mistake in my '101 Songs' post when I listed my 101 favourite songs of the time that I didn't include Going Underground. I remember pondering it, but thinking, actually, I hadn't listened to it for quite a while, it wasn't really still a favourite.
Well, I've listened to it since. And come close to that same feeling I had when I was 15. Going Underground really is a glorious power-pop song. I'm not sure anything else comes close even now. It's incredible that Weller was only 22 when it came out - it's a great lyric, not stunning poetry but simple but effective - nothing clunks - kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns. It's all great stuff.
Moving on briefly, Paul Weller can sometimes be a bit of a dirty word - there can be good reasons for this - his run of albums from the late 90s to early 2000s is pretty average (though's he picked up again significantly now), the Dadrock thing, the hair, but i also sometimes wonder if it's only a certain kind of snobbery which stops him being fully lionised to the extent of say, David Bowie. He's gruff, unglamorous, can seem a little inarticulate, but his career is one of the most eclectic, adventurous, imaginative in British music - he's taken in punk, funk, soul, folk, jazz, house music and plenty more. He's never stopped. You can think he's not the greatest lyricist in the world but then, things like That's Entertainment, some of the stuff on Wild Wood, it's as good as anything else.
Here's a Weller playlist, taking in his whole 35 year career. It's going to be long, because he's done a huge number of great songs, frankly. So there, Weller haters. Huh!!
Going Underground - The Jam
Sunflower - Paul Weller
Are You Trying to be Lonely? - Andy Lewis and Paul Weller
A Town Called Malice - The Jam
No Tears to Cry - Paul Weller
Blink and You'll Miss It - Paul Weller
Headstart for Happiness - The Style Council
My Ever Changing Moods - The Style Council
Man in the Cornershop - The Jam
Time Passes - Paul Weller
Down in the Tube Station at Midnight - The Jam
Beat Surrender - The Jam
Wild Wood - Paul Weller
Moon on Your Pyjamas - Paul Weller
Have You Ever Had it Blue - The Style Council
That's Entertainment - The Jam
Uh Huh Oh Yeh - Paul Weller
Shout to the Top - The Style Council
You're the Best Thing - The Style Council
In the City - The Jam
Tales from the Riverbank - The Jam
Carnation - The Jam
Come On Let's Go - Paul Weller
Above the Clouds - Paul Weller
Frightened - Paul Weller
A Solid bond in your Heart - The Style Council
It's Written in the Stars - Paul Weller
When you're Young - The Jam
The Long Hot Summer - The Style Council
Stanley Road - Paul Weller
Boy About Town - The Jam
Push it Along - Paul Weller
Where'er you Go - Paul Weller
Wasteland - The Jam
English Rose - The Jam
Shadow of the Sun - Paul Weller
There I was, a musical slug, listening to the Capital Radio Hall of Fame, a rundown of the "Greatest Songs of All Time" from 500 to 1, when there it was, at Number 248, sandwiched between Lionel Richie and the Eagles, or whatever, a whole different sound, a surge of adrenaline, a whole new way of looking at and listening to the world.
Back then, it wasn't so easy just to hear something and then enjoy it to one's heart content (I make it sound like the dark ages, that record shops didn't exist, but i had limited money, didn't know much about music, and just generally didn't get out much, also obviously there was no downloading). It was several months where I had the nerve, money and opportunity to buy The Jam's Greatest Hits from Ealing Broadway Our Price. From the day I bought it, I think I listened to Going Underground twice a day, at least, for a year. I sang along, got used to every cadence, every jagged guitar, every release of tension.
Thankfully, I learnt, Going Underground was not a one-off. The Jam's Greatest Hits is one of the finest singles collections of all time- a five year wonder with barely a misfire. Down in the Tube Station is pretty much as perfect to me as Going Underground, A Town Called Malice has got better and better with age, there's nothing not to like from In the City to Beat Surrender.
But Going Underground was the one. Depending on how you look at it, it is extraordinary that it was so low in the Hall of Fame or that it was there at all. It sounded so out of place, yet it truly was a pop smash hit, straight in at Number 1 - I was not a member of an exclusive club in my admiration.
It was a great mistake in my '101 Songs' post when I listed my 101 favourite songs of the time that I didn't include Going Underground. I remember pondering it, but thinking, actually, I hadn't listened to it for quite a while, it wasn't really still a favourite.
Well, I've listened to it since. And come close to that same feeling I had when I was 15. Going Underground really is a glorious power-pop song. I'm not sure anything else comes close even now. It's incredible that Weller was only 22 when it came out - it's a great lyric, not stunning poetry but simple but effective - nothing clunks - kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns. It's all great stuff.
Moving on briefly, Paul Weller can sometimes be a bit of a dirty word - there can be good reasons for this - his run of albums from the late 90s to early 2000s is pretty average (though's he picked up again significantly now), the Dadrock thing, the hair, but i also sometimes wonder if it's only a certain kind of snobbery which stops him being fully lionised to the extent of say, David Bowie. He's gruff, unglamorous, can seem a little inarticulate, but his career is one of the most eclectic, adventurous, imaginative in British music - he's taken in punk, funk, soul, folk, jazz, house music and plenty more. He's never stopped. You can think he's not the greatest lyricist in the world but then, things like That's Entertainment, some of the stuff on Wild Wood, it's as good as anything else.
Here's a Weller playlist, taking in his whole 35 year career. It's going to be long, because he's done a huge number of great songs, frankly. So there, Weller haters. Huh!!
Going Underground - The Jam
Sunflower - Paul Weller
Are You Trying to be Lonely? - Andy Lewis and Paul Weller
A Town Called Malice - The Jam
No Tears to Cry - Paul Weller
Blink and You'll Miss It - Paul Weller
Headstart for Happiness - The Style Council
My Ever Changing Moods - The Style Council
Man in the Cornershop - The Jam
Time Passes - Paul Weller
Down in the Tube Station at Midnight - The Jam
Beat Surrender - The Jam
Wild Wood - Paul Weller
Moon on Your Pyjamas - Paul Weller
Have You Ever Had it Blue - The Style Council
That's Entertainment - The Jam
Uh Huh Oh Yeh - Paul Weller
Shout to the Top - The Style Council
You're the Best Thing - The Style Council
In the City - The Jam
Tales from the Riverbank - The Jam
Carnation - The Jam
Come On Let's Go - Paul Weller
Above the Clouds - Paul Weller
Frightened - Paul Weller
A Solid bond in your Heart - The Style Council
It's Written in the Stars - Paul Weller
When you're Young - The Jam
The Long Hot Summer - The Style Council
Stanley Road - Paul Weller
Boy About Town - The Jam
Push it Along - Paul Weller
Where'er you Go - Paul Weller
Wasteland - The Jam
English Rose - The Jam
Shadow of the Sun - Paul Weller
Friday, 2 November 2012
Brightpop
It's become accepted wisdom in recent times to say that the mid-90s phenomenon known as Britpop was a bit shit, really, full of crappy chancer bands nicking from the 60s, attaching gloopy string sections to lame tracks to give them a bit of gravitas, recycling insular white British cliches and that the only worthwhile bands in the whole thing were the central triumvirate of Oasis, Blur and Pulp. Apart from that, it set British music back years.
And, to an extent, I've gone along with that a little more than I should have. I moved on to what I thought were better things. Britpop had a part in how I got into music in a big way, I was affectionate towards it, felt nostalgic when I heard Wake Up Boo or something, but was prepared to accept that it wasn't all that.
But I'll tell you what happened. I happened to listen to a bit of the Charlatans. And I didn't just think "Aah, remember the Charlatans, they were fun", I thought "This is really really good". It's eclectic, informed, powerful, rocking, elegant, it's great rock music - it's not just way better than current British bands, it's way better than a lot of the American bands I've been harping on about for the last few years. Yes, I know, the Charlatans aren't a Britpop bands per se, they pre and post-date it, but that's my point really - there are an awful lot of great British bands from the late 80s to the early 2000s who hit a critical and commercial high point in the Britpop years of 94 to 97, and that really was a golden time for British music.
Britpop nicked from the 60s - that's what people say, but I think that's missing the point, it nicked from everything, there were shades of early rock'n'roll, 60s pop, glam rock, punk and new wave, new romanticism and baggy in all the big Britpop bands, it was the first movement that harnessed everything that had gone before so effectively and since then everyone has become so self-conscious about their stylistic influences that the actual songs they write are inhibited as a result. Or, you could say that British guitar bands that have striven for fame since then have either struggled with the idea of borrowing from what's gone before and floundered as a result or borrowed from Britpop itself, which distilled its own influences so well. So you end up with bands like the Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand (fun initially but then drowning in self-consciousness) or, even worse, Scouting for Girls - horrible.
A lot of the great bands i'm talking about might balk at being labelled Britpop, but I suppose everyone balks at being labelled anything - the point is that that was a true golden age for British guitar music and that an awful lot of it still sounds tremendous now. And it made the charts exciting in a way they almost certainly never will be again - the bands you liked had hits ... pretty much every week - the Bluetones at Number 2, Ash at Number 5, Blur at Number 1, The Furries at Number 12, Northern Uproar at Number ... no, even I have standards.
A "Britpop" playlist could go on forever, I'll keep it to the 90s but not limit it much more than that - one or two for each band, probably. These will be the bands that got into the charts, that were there and there abouts in the mid-90s. What were your favourites?
End of a Century - blur
Something for the Weekend - Super Furry Animals
Slight Return - The Bluetones
On and On - The Longpigs
Karma Police - Radiohead
Yes - McAlmont and Butler
Forever - The Charlatans
Ring the Bells - James
Live Forever - Oasis
The Wild Ones - Suede
Something Changed - Pulp
Wake Up Boo - The Boo Radleys
The State that I Am In - Belle and Sebastian
All you Good Good People - Embrace
A Design for Life - Manic Street Preachers
Blueton-c - The Bluetones
Going Out - Supergrass
Kings of the Kerb - Echobelly
Ladykillers - Lush
What Do I Do Now? - Sleeper
Waking Up - Elastica
There She Goes - The Las
Local Boy in the Photograph - Stereophonics
The Drugs Don't Work - The Verve
I'm so Lonely - Cast
Legacy - Mansun
Sunrise - The Divine Comedy
Wonderwall - Oasis
Beetlebum - Blur
Animal Nitrate - Suede
Northern Lites -Super Furry Animals
I'm sure I've missed loads of little treats - I've done it pretty much off the top of my head.
So, incidentally, I think the first Britpop song is 'There She Goes' and the "death" of Britpop was Oasis releasing Do You Know What I Mean as the a-side to the first single from 'Be Here Now' and Stay Young as the b-side. And now I'm going to listen to some Space ...
And, to an extent, I've gone along with that a little more than I should have. I moved on to what I thought were better things. Britpop had a part in how I got into music in a big way, I was affectionate towards it, felt nostalgic when I heard Wake Up Boo or something, but was prepared to accept that it wasn't all that.
But I'll tell you what happened. I happened to listen to a bit of the Charlatans. And I didn't just think "Aah, remember the Charlatans, they were fun", I thought "This is really really good". It's eclectic, informed, powerful, rocking, elegant, it's great rock music - it's not just way better than current British bands, it's way better than a lot of the American bands I've been harping on about for the last few years. Yes, I know, the Charlatans aren't a Britpop bands per se, they pre and post-date it, but that's my point really - there are an awful lot of great British bands from the late 80s to the early 2000s who hit a critical and commercial high point in the Britpop years of 94 to 97, and that really was a golden time for British music.
Britpop nicked from the 60s - that's what people say, but I think that's missing the point, it nicked from everything, there were shades of early rock'n'roll, 60s pop, glam rock, punk and new wave, new romanticism and baggy in all the big Britpop bands, it was the first movement that harnessed everything that had gone before so effectively and since then everyone has become so self-conscious about their stylistic influences that the actual songs they write are inhibited as a result. Or, you could say that British guitar bands that have striven for fame since then have either struggled with the idea of borrowing from what's gone before and floundered as a result or borrowed from Britpop itself, which distilled its own influences so well. So you end up with bands like the Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand (fun initially but then drowning in self-consciousness) or, even worse, Scouting for Girls - horrible.
A lot of the great bands i'm talking about might balk at being labelled Britpop, but I suppose everyone balks at being labelled anything - the point is that that was a true golden age for British guitar music and that an awful lot of it still sounds tremendous now. And it made the charts exciting in a way they almost certainly never will be again - the bands you liked had hits ... pretty much every week - the Bluetones at Number 2, Ash at Number 5, Blur at Number 1, The Furries at Number 12, Northern Uproar at Number ... no, even I have standards.
A "Britpop" playlist could go on forever, I'll keep it to the 90s but not limit it much more than that - one or two for each band, probably. These will be the bands that got into the charts, that were there and there abouts in the mid-90s. What were your favourites?
End of a Century - blur
Something for the Weekend - Super Furry Animals
Slight Return - The Bluetones
On and On - The Longpigs
Karma Police - Radiohead
Yes - McAlmont and Butler
Forever - The Charlatans
Ring the Bells - James
Live Forever - Oasis
The Wild Ones - Suede
Something Changed - Pulp
Wake Up Boo - The Boo Radleys
The State that I Am In - Belle and Sebastian
All you Good Good People - Embrace
A Design for Life - Manic Street Preachers
Blueton-c - The Bluetones
Going Out - Supergrass
Kings of the Kerb - Echobelly
Ladykillers - Lush
What Do I Do Now? - Sleeper
Waking Up - Elastica
There She Goes - The Las
Local Boy in the Photograph - Stereophonics
The Drugs Don't Work - The Verve
I'm so Lonely - Cast
Legacy - Mansun
Sunrise - The Divine Comedy
Wonderwall - Oasis
Beetlebum - Blur
Animal Nitrate - Suede
Northern Lites -Super Furry Animals
I'm sure I've missed loads of little treats - I've done it pretty much off the top of my head.
So, incidentally, I think the first Britpop song is 'There She Goes' and the "death" of Britpop was Oasis releasing Do You Know What I Mean as the a-side to the first single from 'Be Here Now' and Stay Young as the b-side. And now I'm going to listen to some Space ...
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
Celtic Soul
Soul music is not just by black people for black people.Obviously. Though you'd be forgiven for thinking so by the lazy shorthand people use these days. The number of times one hears Louis Walsh saying "Your voice is really soulful" to some contestant destined for 7th place in the X-Factor when Louis Walsh wouldn't know soul from westlife, and all he's actually, patronisingly, saying is "I notice you're black".
What is soul music? Well, in Kenya, I remember my friend Job telling me he was a fan of soul music, and when I asked who, he said Erasure, so you know, it's different things to different people.
The kind of soul music I'm going to talk about is the kind that Louis Walsh ought to be well versed in, being as how he's Oirish and all that, it's a disappointingly small subgenre beloved of a knowing few called Celtic Soul.
Now, if I really knew what Celtic Soul was, I'd be well set to write this post. So I thought I'd look it up on wikipedia. But, shock upon shock, it doesn't even have its own wikipedia entry. Dear oh dear. Put in "Celtic Soul" and the closest you'll come is 'Celtic Soul Brothers', the first song on Dexys Midnight Runners' classic album 'Too-Ry-Ay' ... which is a good start as to what Celtic Soul is. Well, not a start, you start with Van Morrison and move to Dexys Midnight Runners, go a little sideways to the Proclaimers and maybe take in the Waterboys too. And what else? Emeli Sande? Glasvegas? Eek.
The inclusion of Proclaimers is helpful, though, because that ties into the other side of how I conceptualise Celtic Soul, which is hinted at (but not dealt with as wholly as I thought it might be) in the book and film 'The Commitments'. A lush film. A film about an Irish soul band, as a expression of their Irish working class roots.
The famous quote goes "Do you not get it lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once and say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud."
Though the Commitments pointedly play American soul music, Motown, Stax, Atlantic etc, and paved the way for any number of student bands, wedding bands and karaoke singers belting out 'Mustang Sally'.
Ironically, it's a wedding scene in The Commitments which sees the singer Declan drunkenly belting out 'Letter from America' by the Proclaimers. Jimmy Rabbitte notes "that eejit's singing something approximating music".
Dexys and the Proclaimers toured together - truly some kind of Celtic Soul Brothers.
And Dexys covered Van Morrison's Jackie Wilson Said, and that's the very crux of this Celtic Soul Music.
I happened to see Dexys and Van Morrison both playing on the same day this summer. Very enjoyable, particularly Van Morrison, who certainly belied his reputation by playing the hits and even giving some banter (though the banter did involve his critics being hung, drawn and quartered).
Anyway, I wish there was more pointedly Celtic soul - there is lots of soulful Celtic music, lots of Irish troubadours bearing their souls and Scottish indie stars crooning to tug the heartstrings.
So, using a fairly broad definition, here's a Celtic soul compilation for the ages:
The Way Young Lovers Do - Van Morrison
Jackie Wilson Said - Van Morrison
Jackie Wilson Said - Dexys Midnight Runners
Geno - Dexys Midnight Runners
Letter from America - The Proclaimers
The Whole of the Moon - The Waterboys
Galileo - Declan O'Rourke
Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard
There's Too Much Love - Belle and Sebastian
A Girl Like You - Edwyn Collins
I Want To Be a Christian- The Proclaimers
I Couldn't Help If I Tried - Dexys Midnight Runners
Into the Mystic - Van Morrison
What is soul music? Well, in Kenya, I remember my friend Job telling me he was a fan of soul music, and when I asked who, he said Erasure, so you know, it's different things to different people.
The kind of soul music I'm going to talk about is the kind that Louis Walsh ought to be well versed in, being as how he's Oirish and all that, it's a disappointingly small subgenre beloved of a knowing few called Celtic Soul.
Now, if I really knew what Celtic Soul was, I'd be well set to write this post. So I thought I'd look it up on wikipedia. But, shock upon shock, it doesn't even have its own wikipedia entry. Dear oh dear. Put in "Celtic Soul" and the closest you'll come is 'Celtic Soul Brothers', the first song on Dexys Midnight Runners' classic album 'Too-Ry-Ay' ... which is a good start as to what Celtic Soul is. Well, not a start, you start with Van Morrison and move to Dexys Midnight Runners, go a little sideways to the Proclaimers and maybe take in the Waterboys too. And what else? Emeli Sande? Glasvegas? Eek.
The inclusion of Proclaimers is helpful, though, because that ties into the other side of how I conceptualise Celtic Soul, which is hinted at (but not dealt with as wholly as I thought it might be) in the book and film 'The Commitments'. A lush film. A film about an Irish soul band, as a expression of their Irish working class roots.
The famous quote goes "Do you not get it lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once and say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud."
Though the Commitments pointedly play American soul music, Motown, Stax, Atlantic etc, and paved the way for any number of student bands, wedding bands and karaoke singers belting out 'Mustang Sally'.
Ironically, it's a wedding scene in The Commitments which sees the singer Declan drunkenly belting out 'Letter from America' by the Proclaimers. Jimmy Rabbitte notes "that eejit's singing something approximating music".
Dexys and the Proclaimers toured together - truly some kind of Celtic Soul Brothers.
And Dexys covered Van Morrison's Jackie Wilson Said, and that's the very crux of this Celtic Soul Music.
I happened to see Dexys and Van Morrison both playing on the same day this summer. Very enjoyable, particularly Van Morrison, who certainly belied his reputation by playing the hits and even giving some banter (though the banter did involve his critics being hung, drawn and quartered).
Anyway, I wish there was more pointedly Celtic soul - there is lots of soulful Celtic music, lots of Irish troubadours bearing their souls and Scottish indie stars crooning to tug the heartstrings.
So, using a fairly broad definition, here's a Celtic soul compilation for the ages:
The Way Young Lovers Do - Van Morrison
Jackie Wilson Said - Van Morrison
Jackie Wilson Said - Dexys Midnight Runners
Geno - Dexys Midnight Runners
Letter from America - The Proclaimers
The Whole of the Moon - The Waterboys
Galileo - Declan O'Rourke
Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard
There's Too Much Love - Belle and Sebastian
A Girl Like You - Edwyn Collins
I Want To Be a Christian- The Proclaimers
I Couldn't Help If I Tried - Dexys Midnight Runners
Into the Mystic - Van Morrison
Friday, 5 October 2012
It's Not the Singer, It's the Song
The above title is a line from The Walkmen song 'Heartbreaker' (though admittedly it's a phrase you'll hear versions of all over the place). Which is ironic, because with The Walkmen, it's, more than most top bands, very much the singer.
Nevertheless, it's a sentiment which probably does guide my view of popular music, that the singer is always in the service of the song, rather than vice versa.
That's why 'The X-Factor' etc will always get it wrong and be unsatisfactory and empty for me, for all its occasional delights - the contestants are always encouraged to see the song as a vehicle for their talents, so they happily wreak all kind of self-indulgent havoc on standards (ancient and modern), never giving the slightest impression they understand the words, rather than just singing them.
Still, there are singers, singers who make a difference, for good or bad, and sometimes they probably have more of an effect on us than we realise.
I did a list on facebook about five years ago of my favourite and least favourite singers. It's a bit mean to talk about least favourite singers, but there are definitely singers who, though they may be popular with others, are a barrier to my enjoyment of a band - I'd include Mick Jagger in that, though I do enjoy his voice and love the Rolling Stones, it is pretty distracting on certain songs. But you know, Bono, Anthony Kiedis, Brandon Flowers, Simon Le Bon, Jarvis Cocker actually, Ian Curtis, Chris Martin - these are all singers who stand in the way of my not disliking their bands. Particularly as they're voices other people seem to like a lot.
I don't know that there are obvious types of voices I like - I don't mind a bit of polish, I sometimes like a baritone, men, women, all fine, sometimes a falsetto, sometimes a show-off, sometimes someone who keeps it simple. It's entirely personal of course who you think makes a nice noise - I always hated Celine Dion's voice for example, found it unlistenable, whereas Whitney Houston's I thought was pretty great - I just thought a lot of the songs a bit naff.
Anyhow, my favourite voice of recent years is definitely the lead singer of The Walkmen, Hamilton Leithauser - I've watched the Walkmen play early evening at a lot of fairly disinterested festivals and seen the kind of effect he has - people go crazy for single notes he sings. He's not a show-off, he's a straightforward rock singer but, for me, he's got it all.
My favourite of all time is probably, rather boringly Jeff Buckley - he may be a bit much for some people, but honestly, has there ever been anything like it? Hear him singing Grace live, it's from another planet, possessed and beyond belief. And he could sing anything.
My other favourites are Marvin Gaye, Shelby Lynne, Bob Dylan, Karen Carpenter, Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses), The Wilsons, Sandy Denny, Jenny Lewis, James Yorkston, Diana Ross (funnily enough), John Grant, Nick Drake, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Emmylou Harris, Andy Williams, Guy Garvey, Kurt Wagner, Laura Marling, Paul Westerberg, Ryan Adams, I could go on I suppose, but those twenty i think have voices which really elevate what they do and get into the very heart of me - they're top of their fields i suppose.
And a double album, highlighting these vocal talents
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
You Don't Have to Syy You Love Me - Shelby Lynne
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - Bob Dylan
Trying To Get The Feeling Again - The Carpenters
Is There a Ghost - Band of Horses
God Only Knows - The Beach Boys
Who Know Where The Time Goes - Fairport Convention
I Never - Rilo Kiley
When the Haar Rolls In - James Yorkston
Love Child - The Supremes
Queen of Denmark - John Grant
Things Behind the Sun - Nick Drake
Mahgeetah - My Morning Jacket
Boulder to Birmingham - Emmylou Harris
The Impossible Dream - Andy Williams
Lippy Kids - Elbow
Grumpus - Lambchop
Sophia - Laura Marling
Baby Learns to Crawl - Paul Westerberg
Avalanche - Ryan Adams
Nevertheless, it's a sentiment which probably does guide my view of popular music, that the singer is always in the service of the song, rather than vice versa.
That's why 'The X-Factor' etc will always get it wrong and be unsatisfactory and empty for me, for all its occasional delights - the contestants are always encouraged to see the song as a vehicle for their talents, so they happily wreak all kind of self-indulgent havoc on standards (ancient and modern), never giving the slightest impression they understand the words, rather than just singing them.
Still, there are singers, singers who make a difference, for good or bad, and sometimes they probably have more of an effect on us than we realise.
I did a list on facebook about five years ago of my favourite and least favourite singers. It's a bit mean to talk about least favourite singers, but there are definitely singers who, though they may be popular with others, are a barrier to my enjoyment of a band - I'd include Mick Jagger in that, though I do enjoy his voice and love the Rolling Stones, it is pretty distracting on certain songs. But you know, Bono, Anthony Kiedis, Brandon Flowers, Simon Le Bon, Jarvis Cocker actually, Ian Curtis, Chris Martin - these are all singers who stand in the way of my not disliking their bands. Particularly as they're voices other people seem to like a lot.
I don't know that there are obvious types of voices I like - I don't mind a bit of polish, I sometimes like a baritone, men, women, all fine, sometimes a falsetto, sometimes a show-off, sometimes someone who keeps it simple. It's entirely personal of course who you think makes a nice noise - I always hated Celine Dion's voice for example, found it unlistenable, whereas Whitney Houston's I thought was pretty great - I just thought a lot of the songs a bit naff.
Anyhow, my favourite voice of recent years is definitely the lead singer of The Walkmen, Hamilton Leithauser - I've watched the Walkmen play early evening at a lot of fairly disinterested festivals and seen the kind of effect he has - people go crazy for single notes he sings. He's not a show-off, he's a straightforward rock singer but, for me, he's got it all.
My favourite of all time is probably, rather boringly Jeff Buckley - he may be a bit much for some people, but honestly, has there ever been anything like it? Hear him singing Grace live, it's from another planet, possessed and beyond belief. And he could sing anything.
My other favourites are Marvin Gaye, Shelby Lynne, Bob Dylan, Karen Carpenter, Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses), The Wilsons, Sandy Denny, Jenny Lewis, James Yorkston, Diana Ross (funnily enough), John Grant, Nick Drake, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Emmylou Harris, Andy Williams, Guy Garvey, Kurt Wagner, Laura Marling, Paul Westerberg, Ryan Adams, I could go on I suppose, but those twenty i think have voices which really elevate what they do and get into the very heart of me - they're top of their fields i suppose.
And a double album, highlighting these vocal talents
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
You Don't Have to Syy You Love Me - Shelby Lynne
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - Bob Dylan
Trying To Get The Feeling Again - The Carpenters
Is There a Ghost - Band of Horses
God Only Knows - The Beach Boys
Who Know Where The Time Goes - Fairport Convention
I Never - Rilo Kiley
When the Haar Rolls In - James Yorkston
Love Child - The Supremes
Queen of Denmark - John Grant
Things Behind the Sun - Nick Drake
Mahgeetah - My Morning Jacket
Boulder to Birmingham - Emmylou Harris
The Impossible Dream - Andy Williams
Lippy Kids - Elbow
Grumpus - Lambchop
Sophia - Laura Marling
Baby Learns to Crawl - Paul Westerberg
Avalanche - Ryan Adams
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
The Wild Mercury Sound
The Mercury shortlist was announced last week - for the first time, I didn't own a single album on the list, which is, I suppose, a sign of getting old, but also of how my tastes are more and more towards Americana. In the past, there were a few years I only had one or two albums on the list, but I remember in those years owning lots of other albums I thought should be on the list - this year, there's not a single British album I'd really sing the praises of, apart, perhaps from Paul Buchanan's 'Mid-Air', which is rather lovely (and very middle aged).
Interestingly, though, I do own previous albums by lots of this year's contenders, albums I have found virtue in but clearly not enough to carry on buying their stuff. I tend to think the most revered British alternative music these days is all angles and new wave and sparkling and clever, and I'm still a little stuck in safe singer-songwriter territory, yet rather dissatisfied by the current singer-songwriter batch.
I'm not entirely ignorant of the contenders - I've seen and heard bits and bobs by pretty much all of them - indeed I'm listening to a selection as we speak and actually very much enjoying it. Alt-J seem to be the name on people's lips - all a bit unSpringsteenlike for me, but I could get into it.
There's a bit of a tradition of slagging off the Mercury list when it comes out every year, but I do actually think it deserves a bit of respect - it seems to be put together fairly, with a good idea of representing different types of music, and with an honest agenda to just choose the ones that are best. It will be perceived to have got it wrong every year, but i bet all the people who slag it off every year listen to some good stuff they wouldn't have otherwise.
And most other music awards are utterly beneath contempt, in my view, from the Brits to the NME Awards, where Oasis, Muse and the Killers seem to have won everything going for years (yeah, alternative) to the overly revered Ivor Novellos, which every year seem to me to laud utter shite, and yet have some kind of reputation as a "Songwriter's Award".
It's fair to say the Mercury Prize has got it wrong a fair few times, wrong in the sense that the albums they've given the top prize to have not gone on to be looked on as classic and the artists responsible for them have not gone on to consistent and strong careers. There have been "urban" winners quite a few times, and apart from Dizzee Rascal's Boy on the Corner, none of the albums or artists have gone on to be seen as greats. [I don't think this is just my guitar music bias speaking - M People, Roni Size, Talvin Singh, Miss Dynamite, Speech Debelle. A bit of a poisoned chalice.] Anything but. I suspect that has a lot to do with the judging process though, where the "indie" vote on the panel is more divided and an unlikely winner emerges.
PJ Harvey is the only person so far to win it twice, and Radiohead, Blur, the Furries, as well as Coldplay, Muse, Kasabian and other big names, have never won it. I own 13 of the winners so far, and Badly Drawn Boy's The Hour of the Bewilderbeast is my favourite of those.
A playlist selected from previous winners might be this:
The Drowners - Suede
The Shining - Badly Drawn Boy
Big Exit - PJ Harvey
Dy-Na-My-Tee - Miss Dynamite
Fix Up, Look Sharp - Dizzee Rascal
Darts of Pleasure - Franz Ferdinand
Fistful of Love - Antony and the Johnsons
Golden Skans - The Klaxons
Starlings - Elbow
VCR - The XX
Interestingly, though, I do own previous albums by lots of this year's contenders, albums I have found virtue in but clearly not enough to carry on buying their stuff. I tend to think the most revered British alternative music these days is all angles and new wave and sparkling and clever, and I'm still a little stuck in safe singer-songwriter territory, yet rather dissatisfied by the current singer-songwriter batch.
I'm not entirely ignorant of the contenders - I've seen and heard bits and bobs by pretty much all of them - indeed I'm listening to a selection as we speak and actually very much enjoying it. Alt-J seem to be the name on people's lips - all a bit unSpringsteenlike for me, but I could get into it.
There's a bit of a tradition of slagging off the Mercury list when it comes out every year, but I do actually think it deserves a bit of respect - it seems to be put together fairly, with a good idea of representing different types of music, and with an honest agenda to just choose the ones that are best. It will be perceived to have got it wrong every year, but i bet all the people who slag it off every year listen to some good stuff they wouldn't have otherwise.
And most other music awards are utterly beneath contempt, in my view, from the Brits to the NME Awards, where Oasis, Muse and the Killers seem to have won everything going for years (yeah, alternative) to the overly revered Ivor Novellos, which every year seem to me to laud utter shite, and yet have some kind of reputation as a "Songwriter's Award".
It's fair to say the Mercury Prize has got it wrong a fair few times, wrong in the sense that the albums they've given the top prize to have not gone on to be looked on as classic and the artists responsible for them have not gone on to consistent and strong careers. There have been "urban" winners quite a few times, and apart from Dizzee Rascal's Boy on the Corner, none of the albums or artists have gone on to be seen as greats. [I don't think this is just my guitar music bias speaking - M People, Roni Size, Talvin Singh, Miss Dynamite, Speech Debelle. A bit of a poisoned chalice.] Anything but. I suspect that has a lot to do with the judging process though, where the "indie" vote on the panel is more divided and an unlikely winner emerges.
PJ Harvey is the only person so far to win it twice, and Radiohead, Blur, the Furries, as well as Coldplay, Muse, Kasabian and other big names, have never won it. I own 13 of the winners so far, and Badly Drawn Boy's The Hour of the Bewilderbeast is my favourite of those.
A playlist selected from previous winners might be this:
The Drowners - Suede
The Shining - Badly Drawn Boy
Big Exit - PJ Harvey
Dy-Na-My-Tee - Miss Dynamite
Fix Up, Look Sharp - Dizzee Rascal
Darts of Pleasure - Franz Ferdinand
Fistful of Love - Antony and the Johnsons
Golden Skans - The Klaxons
Starlings - Elbow
VCR - The XX
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
I was so much older then ...
Bob Dylan's got a new album out, by the way. It's great. It might well be my favourite of his late-years revival. It's funny, well-crafted, silly at times, it's got a lot of verve, the middle section is really exceptional I think, Pay in Blood and Long & Wasted Years are the stand-outs for me. He's 71 and he sounds 71, but no one who's 71 has made such vital music before I'd say.
This late-years revival began with Time Out of Mind, from 1997 - the first proper Bob Dylan that came out while I was a proper Bob Dylan fan (good timing for me) and, one whose reputation has grown over the years. The stand-out song of it is Not Dark Yet, which I remember people at the time saying was the first great song of the rock'n'roll generation aging (particularly in the light of the fact Dylan had almost died that year of some sort of lung infection). Well, 15 years have gone and he's still in the process of aging.
But then I think - well, he doesn't really sound any older now than then. And then I think, he doesn't really sound any older now than 50 years ago. Here's 'Moonshiner' from 50 years ago, a traditional song rather than a Dylan composition, but one of his great vocal performances. He's 21 here, or maybe 22.He sounds 71.
Moonshiner
That was always what made Bob Dylan a great singer, and makes him, somehow or another*, a great singer still. He inhabits the role like no one else. Although I'm not sure he could inhabit the role of a 21 year old now.
*As one nice article said, criticism of Bob Dylan these days, whether live or on record, seems to be from people who have suddenly made the discovery that he has, would you believe it, a funny voice. No shit. Honestly, all those people that still liked him hadn't noticed. Thanks for pointing it out.
But then I think something else, a bit scarier. Forget how old Bob Dylan is, how old am I? I'm as old as Bob Dylan was when he released Blood on the Tracks. The great album of break-up and despair, of middle age, of faded dreams, of a bitter, beaten man, Bob Dylan had gone through all that, he's changed the world, gone away, come back, gone away, come back again, come up with this extraordinary piece of work (definitely my favourite Dylan album). That's how old I am now. When I first heard Blood on the Tracks, I could never imagine being as old as the man who sang it, and yet, that time doesn't feel so long ago, and I really don't feel that old. I should probably feel good about that, but it mainly just makes me realise how remarkable Bob Dylan is and was.
My list of songs is
13 Bob Dylan songs where he sounds older than time
My Back Pages
Moonshiner
Every Grain of Sand
Not Dark Yet
Knockin' on Heaven's Door
I Shall Be Released
Simple Twist of Fate
With God on Our Side
Dear Landlord
I Threw It All Away
Workingman Blues
What Good Am I?
One Too Many Mornings
This late-years revival began with Time Out of Mind, from 1997 - the first proper Bob Dylan that came out while I was a proper Bob Dylan fan (good timing for me) and, one whose reputation has grown over the years. The stand-out song of it is Not Dark Yet, which I remember people at the time saying was the first great song of the rock'n'roll generation aging (particularly in the light of the fact Dylan had almost died that year of some sort of lung infection). Well, 15 years have gone and he's still in the process of aging.
But then I think - well, he doesn't really sound any older now than then. And then I think, he doesn't really sound any older now than 50 years ago. Here's 'Moonshiner' from 50 years ago, a traditional song rather than a Dylan composition, but one of his great vocal performances. He's 21 here, or maybe 22.He sounds 71.
Moonshiner
That was always what made Bob Dylan a great singer, and makes him, somehow or another*, a great singer still. He inhabits the role like no one else. Although I'm not sure he could inhabit the role of a 21 year old now.
*As one nice article said, criticism of Bob Dylan these days, whether live or on record, seems to be from people who have suddenly made the discovery that he has, would you believe it, a funny voice. No shit. Honestly, all those people that still liked him hadn't noticed. Thanks for pointing it out.
But then I think something else, a bit scarier. Forget how old Bob Dylan is, how old am I? I'm as old as Bob Dylan was when he released Blood on the Tracks. The great album of break-up and despair, of middle age, of faded dreams, of a bitter, beaten man, Bob Dylan had gone through all that, he's changed the world, gone away, come back, gone away, come back again, come up with this extraordinary piece of work (definitely my favourite Dylan album). That's how old I am now. When I first heard Blood on the Tracks, I could never imagine being as old as the man who sang it, and yet, that time doesn't feel so long ago, and I really don't feel that old. I should probably feel good about that, but it mainly just makes me realise how remarkable Bob Dylan is and was.
My list of songs is
13 Bob Dylan songs where he sounds older than time
My Back Pages
Moonshiner
Every Grain of Sand
Not Dark Yet
Knockin' on Heaven's Door
I Shall Be Released
Simple Twist of Fate
With God on Our Side
Dear Landlord
I Threw It All Away
Workingman Blues
What Good Am I?
One Too Many Mornings
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)